“What the deuce am I going to do?” he cried, pitching the letter into the waste-paper basket.
He sat down to the piano in the peacock and ivory room and tried to play the nasty crumpled rose-leaf of a manicurist out of his mind.
Suddenly he remembered, with a kind of shock, that he had pledged himself to go up to London the next day to buy an engagement-ring. So after all the manicurist’s defection did not matter. All was again well with the world.
Then he went to bed and slept the sleep of the just and perfect man living the just and perfect life in a just and perfect universe.
And the date of this happening was the fifteenth day of July in the year of grace one thousand nine hundred and fourteen.
CHAPTER III
The shadow cast by the great apse of the cathedral slanted over the end of the Deanery garden, leaving the house in the blaze of the afternoon sun, and divided the old red-brick wall into a vivid contrast of tones. The peace of centuries brooded over the place. No outside convulsions could ever cause a flutter of her calm wings. As it was thirty years ago, when the Dean first came to Durdlebury, as it was three hundred, six hundred years ago, so it was now; and so it would be hundreds of years hence as long as that majestic pile housing the Spirit of God should last.
Thus thought, thus, in some such words, proclaimed the Dean, sitting in the shade, with his hands clasped behind his head. Tea was over. Mrs. Conover, thin and faded, still sat by the little table, wondering whether she might now blow out the lamp beneath the silver kettle. Sir Archibald Bruce, a neighbouring landowner, and his wife had come, bringing their daughter Dorothy to play tennis. The game had already started on the court some little distance off—the players being Dorothy, Peggy and a couple of athletic, flannel-clad parsons. Marmaduke Trevor reposed on a chair under the lee of Lady Bruce. He looked very cool and spick and span in a grey cashmere suit, grey shirt, socks and tie, and grey suède shoes. He had a weak, good-looking little face and a little black moustache turned up at the ends. He was discoursing to his neighbour on Palestrina.
The Dean’s proclamation had been elicited by some remark of Sir Archibald.
“I wonder how you have stuck it for so long,” said the latter. He had been a soldier in his youth and an explorer, and had shot big game.
“I haven’t your genius, my dear Bruce, for making myself uncomfortable,” replied the Dean.
“You were energetic enough when you first came here,” said Sir Archibald. “We all thought you a desperate fellow who was going to rebuild the cathedral, turn the Close into industrial dwellings, and generally play the deuce.”
The Dean sighed pleasantly. He had snowy hair and a genial, florid, clean-shaven face.
“I was appointed very young—six-and-thirty—and I thought I could fight against the centuries. As the years went on I found I couldn’t. The grey changelessness of things got hold of me, incorporated me into them. When I die—for I hope I shan’t have to resign through doddering senility—my body will be buried there”—he jerked his head slightly towards the cathedral—“and my dust will become part and parcel of the fabric—like that of many of my predecessors.”
“That’s all very well,” said Sir Archibald, “but they ought to have caught you before this petrification set in, and made you a bishop.”
It was somewhat of an old argument, for the two were intimates. The Dean smiled and shook his head.
“You know I declined——”
“After you had become petrified.”
“Perhaps so. It is not a place where ambitions can attain a riotous growth.”
“I call it a rotten place,” said the elderly worldling. “I wouldn’t live in it myself for twenty thousand a year.”
“Lots like you said the same in crusading times—Sir Guy de Chevenix, for instance, who was the Lord, perhaps, of your very Manor, and an amazing fire-eater—but—see the gentle irony of it—there his bones lie, at peace for ever, in the rotten place, with his effigy over them cross-legged and his dog at his feet, and his wife by his side. I think he must sometimes look out of Heaven’s gate down on the cathedral and feel glad, grateful—perhaps a bit wistful—if the attribution of wistfulness, which implies regret, to a spirit in Paradise doesn’t savour of heresy——”
“I’m going to be cremated,” interrupted Sir Archibald, twirling his white moustache.
The Dean smiled and did not take up the cue. The talk died. It was a drowsy day. The Dean went off into a little reverie. Perhaps his old friend’s reproach was just. Dean of a great cathedral at thirty-six, he had the world of dioceses at his feet. Had he used to the full the brilliant talents with which he started? He had been a good Dean, a capable, business-like Dean. There was not a stone of the cathedral that he did not know and cherish. Under his care the stability of every part of the precious fabric had been assured for a hundred years. Its financial position, desperate on his appointment, was now sound. He had come into a scene of petty discords and jealousies; for many years there had been a no more united chapter in any cathedral close in England. As an administrator he had been a success. The devotion of his life to the cathedral had its roots deep in spiritual things. For the greater glory of God had the vast edifice been erected, and for the greater glory of God had he, its guardian, reverently seen to its preservation and perfect appointment. Would he have served God better by pursuing the ambitions of youth? He could have had his bishopric; but he knew that the choice lay between him and Chanways, a flaming spirit, eager for power, who hadn’t the sacred charge of a cathedral, and he declined. And now Chanways was a force in the Church and the country, and was making things hum. If he, Conover, after fifteen years of Durdlebury, had accepted, he would have lost the power to make things hum. He would have made a very ordinary, painstaking bishop, and his successor at Durdlebury might possibly have regarded that time-worn wonder of spiritual beauty merely as a stepping-stone to higher sacerdotal things. Such a man, he considered, having once come under the holy glamour of the cathedral, would have been guilty of the Unforgivable Sin. He had therefore saved two unfortunate situations.
“You are quite an intelligent man, Bruce,” he said, with a sudden whimsicality, “but I don’t think you would ever understand.”
The set of tennis being over, Peggy, flushed and triumphant, rushed into the party in the shade.
“Mr. Petherbridge and I have won—six—three,” she announced. The old gentlemen smiled and murmured their congratulations. She swung to the tea-table some paces away, and plucked Marmaduke by the sleeve, interrupting him in the middle of an argument. He rose politely.
“Come and play.”
“My dear,” he said, “I’m such a duffer at games.”
“Never mind; you’ll learn in time.”
He drew out a grey silk handkerchief as if ready to perspire at the first thought of it. “Tennis makes one so dreadfully hot,” said he.
Peggy tapped the point of her foot irritably, but she laughed as she turned to Lady Bruce.
“What’s the good of being engaged to a man if he can’t play tennis with you?”
“There are other things in life besides tennis, my dear,” replied Lady Bruce.
The girl flushed, but being aware that a pert answer turneth away