"Beautiful," said Ronder. "Really, looks as though we are going to have good weather for the Jubilee."
"Hope we do," said Brandon. "Very hard on thousands of people if it"s wet."
"Very," said Ronder. "I hope Mrs. Brandon is well."
"To-day she has a little headache," said Brandon. "But it"s really nothing."
"Well," said Ronder. "I"ve been wondering whether there isn"t some thunder in the air. I"ve been feeling it oppressive myself."
"It does get oppressive," said Brandon, "this time of the year in Glebeshire--especially South Glebeshire. I"ve often noticed it."
"What we want," said Ronder, "is a good thunderstorm to clear the air."
"Just what we"re not likely to get," said Brandon. "It hangs on for days and days without breaking."
"I wonder why that is," said Ronder; "there are no hills round about to keep it. There"s hardly a hill of any size in the whole of South Glebeshire."
"Of course, Polchester"s in a hollow," said Brandon. "Except for the Cathedral, of course. I always envy Lady St. Leath her elevation."
"A fine site, the Castle," said Ronder. "They must get a continual breeze up there."
"They do," said Brandon. "Whenever I"m up there there"s a wind."
This most edifying conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the Reverend Charles Ponting. Mr. Ponting was very long, very thin and very black, his cadaverous cheeks resembling in their colour nothing so much as good fountain-pen ink. He spoke always in a high, melancholy and chanting voice. He was undoubtedly effeminate in his movements, and he had an air of superior secrecy about the affairs of the Bishop that people sometimes found very trying. But he was a good man and a zealous, and entirely devoted to his lord and master.
"Ha! Archdeacon.... Ha! Canon. His lordship will be down in one moment. He has asked me to make his apologies for not being here to receive you. He is just finishing something of rather especial importance."
The Bishop, however, entered a moment later. He was a little, frail man, walking with the aid of a stick. He had snow-white hair, rather thick and long, pale cheeks and eyes of a bright china-blue. He had that quality, given to only a few in this world of happy mediocrities, of filling, at once, any room into which he entered with the strength and fragrance of his spirit. So strong, fearless and beautiful was his soul that it shone through the frail compa.s.s of his body with an unfaltering light. No one had ever doubted the goodness and splendour of the man"s character. Men might call his body old and feeble and past the work that it was still called upon to perform. They might speak of him as guileless, as too innocent of this world"s slippery ways, as trusting where no child of six years of age would have trusted; these things might have been, and were, said, but no man, woman, nor child, looking upon him, hesitated to realise that here was some one who had walked and talked with G.o.d and in whom there was no shadow of deceit nor evil thought. Old Glasgow Parmiter, the lawyer, the wickedest old man Polchester had ever known, said once of him, "If there"s a h.e.l.l, I suppose I"m going to it, and I"m sure I don"t care.
There may be one and there may not. I know there"s a heaven. Purcell lives there."
His voice, which was soft and strong, had at its heart a tiny stammer which came out now and then with a hesitating, almost childish, charm. As he stood there, leaning on his stick, smiling at them, there did seem a great deal of the child about him, and Brandon, Ponting and Ronder suddenly seemed old, wicked and soiled in the world"s ways.
"Please forgive me," he said, "for not being down when you came. I move slowly now.... Luncheon is ready, I know. Shall we go in?"
The four men crossed the stone-flagged hall into the diningroom where Appleford stood, devoutly, as one about to perform a solemn rite. The dining-room was high-ceilinged with a fireplace of old red brick fronted with black oak beams. The walls were plain whitewash, and they carried only one picture, a large copy of Durer"s "Knight and the Devil." The high, broad windows looked out on to the sloping lawn whose green now danced and sparkled under the sun. The trees that closed it in were purple shadowed.
They sat, cl.u.s.tered together, at the end of a long oak refectory table.
The Bishop himself was a teetotaler, but there was good claret and, at the end, excellent port. The only piece of colour on the table was a bowl of dark-blue gla.s.s piled with fruit. The only ornament in the room was a beautifully carved silver crucifix on the black oak mantelpiece. The sun danced across the stained floor with every pattern and form of light.
Brandon could not remember a more unpleasant meal in that room; he could not, indeed, remember ever having had an unpleasant meal there before. The Bishop talked, as he always did, in a most pleasant and easy fashion. He talked about the nectarines and plums that were soon to glorify his garden walls, about the pears and apples in his orchard, about the jokes that old Puddifoot made when he came over and examined his rheumatic limbs. He gently chaffed Ponting about his punctuality, neatness and general dislike of violent noises, and he bade Appleford to tell the housekeeper, Mrs.
Brenton, how especially good to-day was the fish souffle. All this was all it had ever been; nothing could have been easier and more happy. But on other days it had always been Brandon who had thrown back the ball for the Bishop to catch. Whoever the other guest might be, it was always Brandon who took the lead, and although he might be a little ponderous and slow in movement, he supplied the Bishop"s conversational needs quite adequately.
And to-day it was Ronder; from the first, without any ostentation or presumption, with the utmost naturalness, he led the field. To understand the full truth of this occasion it must be known that Mr. Ponting had, for a considerable number of years past, cherished a deep but private detestation of the Archdeacon. It was hard to say wherein that hatred had had it inception--probably in some old, long-forgotten piece of cheerful patronage on Brandon"s part; Mr. Ponting was of those who consider and dwell and dwell again, and he had, by this time, dwelt upon the Archdeacon so long and so thoroughly that he knew and resented the colour of every one of the Archdeacon"s waistcoat b.u.t.tons. He was, perhaps, quick to perceive to-day that a mightier than the Archdeacon was here; or it may have been that he was well aware of what had been happening in Polchester during the last weeks, and was even informed of the incidents of the last three days.
However that may be, he did from the first pay an almost exaggerated deference to Ronder"s opinion, drew him into the conversation at every possible opportunity, with such, interjections as "How true! How very true! Don"t you think so, Canon Ronder?" or "What has been your experience in such a case, Canon Ronder?" or "I think, my lord, that Canon Ronder told me that he knows that place well," and disregarding entirely any remarks that Brandon might happen to make.
No one could have responded more brilliantly to this opportunity than did Ronder; indeed the Bishop, who was his host at the Palace to-day for the first time, said after his departure, "That"s a most able man, most able.
Lucky indeed for the diocese that it has secured him...a delightful fellow."
No one in the world could have been richer in anecdotes than Ronder, anecdotes of precisely the kind for the Bishop"s taste, not too worldly, not too clerical, amusing without being broad, light and airy, but showing often a fine scholarship and a wise and thoughtful experience of foreign countries. The Bishop had not laughed so heartily for many a day. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he cried at the anecdote of the two American ladies in Siena. "That"s good, indeed...that"s very good. Did you get that, Ponting? Dear me, that"s perfectly delightful!" A little tear of shining pleasure trickled down his cheek. "Really, Canon, I"ve never heard anything better."
Brandon thought Ronder"s manners outrageous. Poor Bishop! He was indeed failing that he could laugh so heartily at such pitiful humour. He tried, to show his sense of it all by grimly pursuing his food and refusing even the ghost of a chuckle, but no one was perceiving him, as he very bitterly saw. The Bishop, it may be, saw it too, for at last he turned to Brandon and said:
"But come, Archdeacon. I was forgetting. You wrote to me s-something about that Jubilee-music in the Cathedral. You find that Ryle is making rather a m-mess of things, don"t you?"
Brandon was deeply offended. Of what was the Bishop thinking that he could so idly drag forward the substance of an entirely private letter, without asking permission, into the public air? Moreover, the last thing that he wanted was that Ronder should know that he had been working behind Ryle"s back. Not that he was in the least ashamed of what he had done, but here was precisely the thing that Ronder would like to use and make something of. In any case, it was the principle of the thing. Was Ronder henceforth to be privy to everything that pa.s.sed between himself and the Bishop?
He never found it easy to veil his feelings, and he looked now, as Ponting delightedly perceived, like an overgrown, sulky schoolboy.
"No, no, my lord," he said, looking across at Ponting, as though he would love to set his heel upon that pale but eager visage. "You have me wrong there. I was making no complaint. The Precentor knows his own business best."
"You certainly said something in your letter," said the Bishop vaguely.
"There was s-something, Ponting, was there not?"
"Yes, my lord," said Ponting. "There was. But I expect the Archdeacon did not mean it very seriously."
"Do you mean that you find the Precentor inefficient?" said the Bishop, looking at the coffee with longing and then shaking his head. "Not to-day, Appleford, alas--not to-day."
"Oh, no," said Brandon, colouring. "Of course not. Our tastes differ a little as to the choice of music, that"s all. I"ve no doubt that I am old- fashioned."
"How do you find the Cathedral music, Canon?" he asked, turning to Ronder.
"Oh, I know very little about it," said Ronder, smiling. ""Nothing in comparison with the Archdeacon. I"m sure he"s right in liking the old music that people have grown used to and are fond of. At the same time, I must confess that I haven"t thought Ryle too venturesome. But then I"m very ignorant, having been here so short a time."
"That"s right, then," said the Bishop comfortably. "There doesn"t seem much wrong."
At that moment Appleford, who had been absent from the room for a minute, returned with a note which he gave to the Bishop.
"From Pybus, my lord," he said; "some one has ridden over with it."
At the word "Pybus" there was an electric silence in the room. The Bishop tore open the letter and read it. He half started from his chair with a little exclamation of distress and grief.
"Please excuse me," he said, turning to them. "I must leave you for a moment and speak to the bearer of this note. Poor Morrison...at last...
he"s gone!--Pybus!..."
The Archdeacon, in spite of himself, half rose and stared across at Ronder. Pybus! The living at last was vacant.
A moment later he felt deeply ashamed. In that sunlit room the bright green of the outside world quivering in pools of colour upon the pure s.p.a.ce of the white walls spoke of life and beauty and the immortality of beauty.
It was hard to think of death there in such a place, but one must think of it and consider, too, Morrison, who had been so good a fellow and loved the world, and all the things in it, and had thought of heaven also in the spare moments that his energy left him.
A great sportsman he had been, with a famous breed of bull-terrier, and anxious to revive the South Glebeshire Hunt; very fine, too, in that last terrible year when the worst of all mortal diseases had leapt upon his throat and shaken him with agony and the imminent prospect of death-- shaken him but never terrified him. Brandon summoned before him that broad, jolly, laughing figure, summoned it, bowed to its fort.i.tude and optimism, then, as all men must, at such a moment, considered his own end; then, having paid his due to Morrison, returned to the great business of the--Living.
They were gathered together in the hall now. The Bishop had known Morrison well and greatly liked him, and he could think of nothing but the man himself. The question of the succession could not come near him that day, and as he stood, a little white-haired figure, tottering on his stick in the flagged hall, he seemed already to be far from the others, to be caught already half-way along the road that Morrison was now travelling.
Both Brandon and Ronder felt that it was right for them to go, although on a normal day they would have stayed walking in the garden and talking for another three-quarters of an hour until it was time to catch the three- thirty train from Carpledon. Mr. Ponting settled the situation.
"His lordship," he said, "hopes that you will let Ba.s.sett drive you into Polchester. There is the little wagonette; Ba.s.sett must go, in any case, to get some things. It is no trouble, no trouble at all."