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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 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 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 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.