I FRANCIS OBLIGES

          One is One and all alone And ever more shall be so.         
OLD SONG.

THERE was once a time, and not so long ago either, when gentle people were so gentle that the males could not (with the countenance of their families) enter upon any profession other than the Army, the Navy, or the Church.

Francis Christopher Folyat was a male member of a gentle family that had done no work for two generations and, unfortunately, had not been clever enough to keep its revenues from dwindling. He was the eldest son and he had two brothers, so that there was one Folyat for each of the three professions, if enough patronage could be collected from their various titled and more or less influential connections. Francis had a snub nose, William had an aquiline nose which his mother adored, and Peter had a nose which betrayed a very remote Jewish infection of the blood of the race.

Parenthetically let it be observed that the name Folyat should be written with two little fs—ffolyat, for so the name was spelt by the only really distinguished Folyat, Henry, who had been mixed up in the Gunpowder Plot, so that his name is printed to this day in more than one History of England, and to this day, in spite of its deep-rooted conservatism, the family is proud of that insurgent son. He marks its descent for all to see, and, as it is all so long ago, it is easy to forget that he failed to do that for which certain politicians have become infamous, namely, to blow up the House of Lords and, with it, his cousins, the Baron Folyat and the Viscount Bampfield of his day. He escaped from England, and the French Feuillats, of whom the [Pg 2]present representative keeps a newspaper kiosk on the Rue de Rivoli, just outside the Métro station by the Louvre, are his direct descendants. English interest in that branch of the family ceases with the conspirator Henry.

The grandfather of Francis Folyat had a seat in the country and a mansion in London, also a coach and a barouche, an advowson or two, and a vast number of servants; also a large collection of portraits, including a Van Dyck, a Holbein, and a Sir Peter Lely. The father of Francis Folyat left the seat in the country in a dilapidated condition, and only so much else as he could not possibly avoid leaving. However, Baron Folyat and Viscount Bampfield behaved very handsomely and agreed to assist the widow with their patronage. Baron Folyat’s magnanimity stopped short at his promise, but Viscount Bampfield was as good as his word, and when the time came for Francis to enter upon a career he procured him a commission in His Majesty’s Army. Francis was highly delighted at this, and saw himself stepping into the Duke of Wellington’s shoes when that illustrious man should be gathered to that fold where the most illustrious are even as the meanest of God’s creatures. He spent a glorious day in the top of his favourite oak-tree in the park planning heroic wars for England and telling the birds that at last they had something to sing about. He had never thought of it before, but, as it had been decided that he was to be a soldier, he flared to the project, saw himself in a red coat charging like Marmion, or dancing at a ball like that described so melodramatically by the wicked poet, Lord Byron, when Belgium’s capital had “gathered there her beauty and her chivalry”; more, since it might be his duty to die for England, he fetched up an England worth dying for, a heroic, majestic king, a cause, and a God cursing England’s enemies. He thoroughly enjoyed himself and prepared a martial oration in good Ciceronic periods for his mother’s benefit, when, as he knew she would, she gave him her blessing and delivered herself of a homily over her soldier-son.

“I will be,” he said, “a true Folyat, worthy of the name I bear.”

[Pg 3]

As he entered the house he met his brother William, whom he had always disliked more than any one in the world—he had often prayed to God to make him like William better—and he thought there was a curious look in his eyes. He put it down to envy and liked William less than ever. William sidled up to him and said:

“Mother wishes to see you.”

A wish from their mother was a command, always obeyed, as he obeyed it now. She was a very handsome woman. She had been the celebrated Miss Cresitter and she never forgot it. She had been a toast, and queened it accordingly. Her portrait had been painted by an extremely fashionable and very indifferent painter and it hung in her room, the best in the house. She wore a beautiful lace fichu and black lace mittens, and the lines of her face were hard. Her hair was done in ringlets on either side of her face and drawn up into a knot at the back of her head. In front it was parted in the middle and plentifully oiled. The furniture in the room was handsome and ponderous, and there was nowhere an indication of any sort of recognition of the loveliness of the view from the window.

Francis stood, as he had been trained to do in his mother’s presence, and waited for her to speak. She was in no hurry and kept him standing, and when she spoke he was startled, as he never failed to be, by the rich tones of her voice. It was a magnificent voice, and she knew it and used it caressingly, lingering on her favourite notes, which she threw cunningly upon the open vowels. Francis was a fine word for her purposes. She might have put a world of affection into her intonation of it, but that seems never to have occurred to her. It never occurred to Francis either.

“Francis,” she said, “I have been thinking.”

This called for no reply and Francis made none.

“I do not think,” she went on, “that you are altogether suitable for the army. You are too gentle. You cannot say ‘No.’ You are—how shall I say it?—too emotional, too much given to dreams. The life of a soldier is stern [Pg 4]and calls for resolution. The Folyats are, and always have been, weak. There have been exceptions it is true, but I have never seen any indication that you are one of them.”

Francis was cut to the quick, but he had never in his life doubted the truth of anything his mother said, and, when she pointed out the temptations of a soldier’s life, he began to see himself as a feeble will-less wastrel utterly unfitted to wear the king’s uniform. Better never to wear it than to disgrace it! It was quite as easy for him to see himself in this light as to dream heroically of warlike deeds and successful prowess. His mother played upon his foible and stripped him mercilessly of red coat, sword, epaulets, cocked hat, and glorious future. He capitulated and agreed that he was incapable of saying “No,” and was therefore unfitted to take up the commission so kindly obtained for him by his cousin Bampfield.

Having been robbed of his dream, he did not very much care what the future held for him. His mother explained to him that she had very little money and could leave him less, and that if he would go into the Church his Cousin Bampfield could provide him with a living as soon as he had been ordained. She could not send him to Oxford or Cambridge, since the estate of a gentleman in those universities was costly, but she had made inquiries and found that the University of Dublin, the Irish being notoriously poor, could equip a divinity student with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, theology, and a degree for a modest annual sum.

Francis embraced this plan miserably enough, and began to study the Greek Testament with the vicar. The subject of the commission was never reopened, and his mother was more amiable to him than she had ever been.

A few months later it was announced that William was to stay with Cousin Bampfield, and Francis learned that the commission had been transferred to his detested young brother. He lost his temper, waylaid William, dragged him behind the stables, and thumped his aquiline nose until it swelled and assumed a red and purple hue, [Pg 5]and William howled and vowed that if ever he could do his brother a mischief he would. No hint of the combat ever reached their mother, in spite of her distress at the damage to her William’s beautiful nose, and the brothers went their ways—William abroad, to stay with his aunt by marriage, the Comtessa di Sangiorgi, and Francis to Dublin, where he lodged with a slatternly Irishwoman, who corrupted his habits and encouraged him in his natural indolence of mind and excessive good-nature.

Of his university life nothing very definite is known. He was in every way unremarkable. He was too simple and direct to achieve notoriety by conflict with his fellow-undergraduates. He recognised that he was in Dublin to procure a degree, and set himself to achieve that purpose with the minimum of trouble. He acquired a taste for the Latin poets, especially Juvenal, Horace, and Lucretius, and he was never weary of reading the fragmentary novel of Petronius Arbiter. He had many acquaintances and few friends, and he devoted much time to the growth and cultivation of a long golden beard, which, together with his snub nose, earned him the nickname of Socrates, or Old Soc. In Ireland he was happier than he ever was again in all his long life, though, with his large capacity for enjoyment, it cannot be said that he was ever genuinely unhappy. In Ireland he found an atmosphere altogether congenial to his temperament, which found its food in Rabelais, Montaigne (Voltaire he would not read as he was going to be a clergyman), and so led him to the conviction that English literature was diverted from its true channel after the death of Henry Fielding. (He once took a chaplaincy in Lisbon because he wished to see and to honour the novelist’s grave.) He made friends enough to be asked to spend his vacations away from home, and was glad to have excuses to give to his mother—excuses which he conveyed to her in letters beginning “Dear Madam” and subscribed “Your obedient son.”

Nothing occurred to disturb his equable determination to enter the Church, and after he had taken the degree of Bachelor of Divinity he swallowed the Thirty-nine Articles [Pg 6]without blinking and proceeded to ordination at the hands of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, shortly after the marriage of Queen Victoria with her cousin Prince Albert, not yet either great or good, and almost within a week of his brother William’s departure with his regiment for India.

For a few months he acted as chaplain in his cousin Lord Folyat’s household, and was amused to find his position as spiritual adviser and curate of souls gave him a status slightly above that of the butler and, so far as cordiality went, distinctly below that of the huntsman who fed and trained the hounds. He comforted himself with the reflection that his condition was at any rate better than that of Parson Adams, though his deserts were less, and took steps to obtain work independently of his family. This greatly upset madam, his mother, who warned him that he might be jeopardising his chances of the next family living. Within himself he argued that, being by profession a shepherd of souls, he must not waste time in places where there was not one to be found. He did not, however, lay this argument before his mother, but accepted a curacy at one hundred and ten pounds in South Devon, on a pleasant estuary, in a little town that had been a seaport in old days, trading busily with France and the Netherlands, and once familiar ground to Francis Drake and many another Elizabethan adventurer. Here there might or might not be souls for his charge, but there was the sea, and romance, and a heronry, and woods that were a perfect paradise for birds. He went down to the place and wrote his mother a very fine literary description of its natural beauties, which he sent to her by the new penny post and promised that he would stay with her for six days before he entered upon his new life.

He arrived to find her in her great four-poster bed, shrivelled and very little, and looking very old in the shadow of its massive hangings. Her appearance shocked him. He had never seen anybody die, and he had a strange feeling that he was being very unfairly treated, and he realised painfully that in honouring his father’s memory and his mother he had enjoyed only a very unsatisfactory relationship. His brother William was in India; Peter [Pg 7]was on the high seas, and no word was to be expected from him for three years or more. He was alone, and he felt ashamed of his incapacity to grapple with the situation. His mother, perhaps as a tactful tribute to the profession into which she had forced him, asked him to read the Bible, and automatically he turned to the Book of Ecclesiastes and read her the passage in the last chapter which contains some of the soundest and most neglected advice ever given to mankind. He made no attempt to reconcile it with Christian teaching and his work, but found himself delighting in the spiritual health of the words. His mother said:

“Francis, you must read better than that.”

This rather irritated him, though he knew it was selfish and inappropriate at such a time. He replied:

“Mother, I could have wished to come to see you in a red coat. It has been ordered that I should wear a black. I do not think I shall ever be a bishop, but I will do my best to remain a gentleman and to be worthy of the name I bear.”

His mother turned the subject and talked to him of material matters, and made him promise to preserve intact the family portraits—twelve in all. Certain articles of furniture and plate he was to keep in trust for his brothers when they should return to England. William, she said, was certain to be a general, and Peter could hardly fail, with so much influence, to become an admiral.

“And I,” thought Francis, “am a stranger to ambition.”

Suddenly tears came to his eyes and he had a feeling of immense pity, and it was so queer to him that he should have an overflowing emotion in his mother’s presence that he was relieved when this colloquy was broken off by the entry of Dr. Fish, the physician from the town five miles away, who still wore a wig and knee-breeches and looked like a sparrow after a dust-bath.

Francis left him with his patient and went into the fruit-garden to enjoy a pipe of tobacco, a luxury which had mastered him in Dublin. He learned there to smoke a [Pg 8]clay pipe and bird’s-eye tobacco and never changed them for sixty years.

Dr. Fish was rather a long time closeted in the dark room with the great bed, and when he came down Francis met him with an anxious face.

“Die?” said Dr. Fish. “Not a bit of it. She’ll live to be a hundred.”

But to Francis she was already dead, and in his life thereafter she was a ghost whom he regarded with a friendly eye. Never again did he allow her to meddle in his affairs.