The Soldier (Kinross)

BY ALBERT KINROSS

O the German friend who had come down to us from London, “I'll show you one of the sights of England,” I said; “it's rather more than a man; it's an institution, I'll show you one of our sporting parsons—they're unique.”

The Baron was puzzled. “I hardly understand,” said he; “a parson and sport; the two things are not reconciled. In my country a parson is a good but insignificant man who occasionally has the fortune to—I cannot express that well in English—to present the world with a pretty daughter. Like your Vicar of Wakefield, for instance.”

“To-morrow we'll breakfast with the Vicar of Hatch. He expects us; he expects the whole county; we'll drive over early and be in time for everything.”

And so, accordingly, we two were on the road to Hatch at ten o'clock next morning; and on that road drove, biked, walked, motored everything and everybody that had the gift of locomotion. It was a procession when we neared the Vicarage, and the last lane was a Pilgrims' Way. The Vicar had asked the whole county to a hunt breakfast, and the meet was in the twenty-acre meadow outside his gates. At noon, precisely, the stag would be uncarted.

We began, of course, with the breakfast. The entire Vicarage seemed full of it. In the square hall, which is as good a room as any in the house, the nobility and gentry discussed their wine and sandwiches. The Baron approved of the nobility and gentry, and especially of its young women, whom he described as Amazons. They had the freshness of the hour and season. “No brains to speak of, but a magnificent health that is worth all intellect”—I am quoting from a subsequent letter of the Baron's. I had, however, not brought this stranger here to wax poetic over our young women. It was the men that he must see; the farmers, small farmers, market-gardeners and higglers, the fruit-growers, dairymen, bailiffs, bookies, and other children of the soil who had adventured to this open house. Talk about catholic—the Vicar of Hatch was more catholic than the Pope! He moved, fit and ruddy, among his guests, in the whitest of breeches, the shiniest of boots, and a coat so perfectly cut as to set the Baron's thoughts on a change of tailor. The Vicar wore a tie instead of a stock and pin; it was the one outward sign of grace and of his calling.

He greeted us and found us seats near a gigantic turkey that was being carved by a gigantic farmer whose daughter had been one of the Amazons in the hall—the younger generation inclines now towards Amazonhood, and the land is making money again after years of loss. The gigantic turkey had been set aside for this function; as it progressed in size and girth its doom was sealed. “These are your peasants,” whispered the Baron, looking round upon a score of weather-worn faces; “they give up a day's work for sport?” ... “And a good feed, and the honour and the glory, and because it's the Vicar—you see he's a special friend of theirs,” I answered. There was no need to whisper in that clatter of knife and fork and honest munching. The men stuck to their business, and, when one was done and held as much as he could hold, he gave way to another. Three such rooms there were, full of the countryside and the sober faces of men whose work lies out of doors. I don't think a tramp would have been turned away, but even tramps know their places....

Outside in the paddock, grooms and riders were walking the horses. It was a full March morning of wind and shine and briskness. Presently we joined the procession to the twenty-acre meadow, and saw the stag uncarted—an old and knowing rogue who understood the game. And then came the hounds and two hundred men and women and children streaming on their mounts. It was a picture, English—so truly English under that March sky and spreading over those green acres of green turf!

“Bravo!” shouted the Baron standing erect and following with his eyes. The gigantic farmer was sitting a gigantic horse beside us. “It's a sight,” he said, “it's a sight!' The Baron asked him why he was not with the hunt. “There's my boy and my girl,” he answered, “somebody's got to keep an eye on things,” he laughed; “but I don't grudge it them. If they get their pleasures honest and open they won't go gettin' of them underhand.” And before I could explain how this was a plagiarism of the Vicar's doctrine, that horseman himself came galloping by, hotfoot to catch up. His duties as host had made him a little late.

His hat was polished like a mirror, and his seat and hands were those of a prizewinner at countless shows; he was riding a beast that needed neither spur nor urging.... “And that man is a Vicar,” cried the Baron, “What a waste of a fine soldier—what a waste!”

A month went by before the Baron came again.

“And your sporting parson,” he asked, “has he broken his neck yet?” It was one of his first questions.

“We'll go and listen to him on Sunday—his church is fuller than ours.”

“I should not be surprised.” The Baron had met our Vicar and been most properly be-Baroned and re-Baroned and tre-Baroned. “I thought only servants did that,” he had said when it was over.

“It is a servant, a servant of the lord—any lord will do,” was my irreverent answer, “or even any baron.”

We heard the Vicar of Hatch that Sunday morning, and the church was as well-attended as his breakfast. A half-dozen old maids and ritualists went elsewhere, but we outsiders more than took their places.

We listened to what the Baron later on described as “a sporting sermon.”

... Life was a game, to be played squarely, honestly, according to the rules, and, if every now and again things went against you, you must play the harder and hold fast to the right—such may have been the gist of it.... Simple, homely, and perhaps obvious it all seemed, but those were simple, homely, and perhaps obvious faces that were upturned to him.

We were on the homeward journey, and, “What does such a man do when he gets old?” asked the Baron.

“He never gets old,” I laughed.

“True,” said the Baron. And next day we drove over to the point-to-point steeplechases and saw the Vicar win a pot and blushingly receive it from her ladyship, the Master's wife. It was the most popular win of the afternoon; and the very bookies that had lost money over him cheered him, those same bookies who had edged and sidled in to breakfast a month ago. It had been good riding and good thinking, pluck and judgment and a seasoned horse that had long ago made friends with its master and understood.... “And that man is a vicar,” repeated my friend, the German baron, “What a waste of a fine soldier—what a waste!”

Summer came and with it the Baron, a trifle jaded after the Embassy and the Season's crush.

“And your parson,” he asked, “now that the hunting is over?”

“Will you help him? He's taking all his old women out for the day; there'll be a picnic and games and dancing, and paddling in the sea at Netherhythe. He's asked me to look after a load, and you're to help.” And the Baron was ready and came down next morning in a suit of white flannels and a cabbage-coloured hat.

We had two brake-loads of old ladies, of any and every persuasion, out for a long day, with the Vicar and his big girl in chief command. It was a long, long day, and the Baron returned exhausted.

“Who pays for all this?” he asked.

“You pay some, and I.”

“It's worth the money,” said the Baron, handing over his sovereign, “I have never seen old women so happy and so abandoned. And not once was I be-Baroned; on the contrary, they made every allowance for my being a foreigner. Your English pride,” he added: “I wish we had more of it in just that way.”

After dinner he recounted some of his adventures. He had been made the recipient of confidences; he had listened to little stories, of churchings, marryings, christenings and burials, of winter's need and summer's colic, of girls gone straying and lads in trouble, and how the Vicar had seen them through. The Vicar was the hero: of comedy, tragedy, farce, of melodrama, if that was the way it came.

On the Saturday afternoon our village was playing Hatch at cricket, and the Baron had to turn out and do his duty with the rest of us. He slogged one into a hayfield, where it was lost till the mowing. The Vicar himself led on his men and played the game as it was taught at our public-schools some thirty years ago. His straight bat carried him through the innings, and his slows had already made us look as foolish as we felt. He took it modestly, quietly, as though it were more of an accident, a lucky chance, than much his usual form.

The Baron congratulated him, yet, once out of earshot, vented his despair.

“A leader—a born leader,” he began, “and that man is a parson! In my country he would have been a soldier”

“But—but he is,” I ventured; “isn't this soldiering, isn't this action, isn't this—the nearest way?”