Under One Flag Part 38

"It was brought to me by Mr Boulter, the landlord of 'The Rose and Crown.'"

"Boulter!--'The Rose and Crown!'--No, by George!"

His lords.h.i.+p said "By George!" and as he said it the Dean shrunk back as if he had received a blow.

"Mr Boulter, as the price of his silence, extracted from me a promise that his lease should be renewed."

The Bishop woke up. He showed more alertness than he had hitherto displayed.

"You promised him that his lease should be renewed--the lease of 'The Rose and Crown'?"

"I did. I thought it better that I should do so than that such a story should be told."

"Story? What story?"

The Dean, before he answered, indulged himself with a pause for consideration.

"My lord, if any word which I may utter seems lacking in respect, as coming from me to you, I entreat your pardon. My lord, when I heard that, after preaching a sermon, and so grand a sermon, upon total abstinence, you pa.s.sed straight from the cathedral pulpit to the bar of a common public-house, and there drank so large a quant.i.ty of wine that, in the temporary forgetfulness which it occasioned, you left the sermon itself behind you in the bar, I felt that it were better that I should promise almost anything than that such a story should be told."

As he listened the Bishop's countenance underwent a variety of changes. When the Dean had finished the Bishop dropped into a chair, and--laughed. Not a genteel simper, but a loud and a long guffaw. The Dean felt that he could not endure such levity even from a bishop--his own bishop, too.

"My lord, in such a matter you may see occasion for merriment, but if you could have seen, at the Deanery, the faces of the cathedral clergy as I told to them the story--"

"Pettifer, what do you mean?"

Springing to his feet, the Bishop grasped the speaker by the arm. The Dean was startled.

"I say, if you could only have seen their faces--"

"Do you mean to say that you have told this story to anyone?"

"I was constrained to state my reasons for giving such a promise to the landlord of 'The Rose and Crown.'"

"I hardly know if I ought not to strike you, Arthur Pettifer."

"My lord!"

"I hardly know if I ought not to pillory you in the market-place, and so compel you to do penance for your slanderous tongue. I have long been conscious of a certain pharisaical narrowness in your mental and in your moral outlook. I have seen in you what has seemed to me a hideous tendency to think the worst both of women and of men. But I never thought you capable of such gross obliquity of judgment as you yourself appear now to own to. Is it possible that you believed that such a story as you have told me could be true?"

The Dean had turned quite pale. He seemed to speak beneath his breath.

"Is it possible that Boulter lied?"

"Is it possible, Arthur Pettifer, that you could believe that I--I, Ralph Ingall, with whose life's history you are as well acquainted almost as myself--could so perjure myself that, as G.o.d's minister, in G.o.d's house, I could pledge myself never again to let alcohol pa.s.s my lips in any shape or form, and that then, with that pledge still warm upon my lips, I could pa.s.s straight into a pot-house and stupefy myself with wine?"

"Was it--was it Budgen, then?"

"Budgen? Budgen? Pettifer, this is worse and worse! You know that Budgen has never touched a drop of alcoholic stimulant since the day that he was born. I will tell you the story of that bag so far as I know it myself. And I will see that your promise to the man Boulter is kept both in the spirit and the letter. I will place it upon you, as an enduring penance, that for the continued existence of his drink-shop you, and you alone, shall be responsible."

The Dean was silent. He seemed to totter as a man who received a crus.h.i.+ng blow. The Bishop paced up and down the room. Like an accusing spirit--possessed of a tolerable corporation--he poured out upon the Dean a curious, correct, and circ.u.mstantial history of the adventures of his sermon-bag.

"There was a man at my college whose name I need not mention. We were ordained together. I will put it gently, and will say that he did not take full advantage of his opportunities. I believe that, for some time now, he has ceased to exercise his clerical office. He has become a reporter for the '----'"--the Bishop named a paper which all good Churchmen are supposed to read--"and he came to me yesterday afternoon, into the vestry, after I had done my sermon. Possibly you may have seen him there. He told me that he had come down from town specially to report my sermon. According to him the train had been late, and he only arrived in time to hear a part. He asked me if I would let him see my notes. On the spur of the moment I handed him my bag, with the sermon in it. I told him that he might make, what he expressed a desire to make, a verbatim copy, and that he was then to return to me my property. I felt immediately afterwards that I had, perhaps, not done the wisest possible thing. But it was then too late. After the story you have told me, what he did with bag and sermon I can guess."

While the Bishop was still speaking a servant appeared at the door.

"My lord, a person--I believe a clergyman--desires me to inform your lords.h.i.+p that he wishes to see you at once upon very pressing business."

"Yes, my lord; that is so."

The scandalised servant turned to find that the person alluded to had, uninvited, found his way into the Bishop's presence. The Bishop recognised his visitor; he signified the same to the servant who had _not_ shown him in.

The visitor in question was an individual of somewhat doubtful appearance. He looked half cleric, half layman. He was short and stout, and so far resembled the Bishop, but the resemblance went no farther.

The Bishop, taking possession of the little leather bag which the Dean still retained, held it out to the newcomer.

"Well, sir, have you come to make another copy of my sermon? As you perceive, it has been returned to me, but not by you."

The stranger wiped his brow. He seemed more than a trifle embarra.s.sed.

"I regret to say that I have not yet taken a copy of it, my lord. The fact is, my lord, that, as I told you yesterday, I left town without having lunched, and after leaving your lords.h.i.+p in the cathedral I felt so exhausted that I just stepped across the road to take a gla.s.s of wine--"

"Quite so, sir. I understand too well. Since my sermon upon temperance has once been returned by the landlord of a tavern, I do not think that I care to run the risk of its reaching me by means of a similar channel a second time. So far as you are concerned, sir, my sermon must go unreported." The Bishop rang the bell. The servant reappeared. "Dawes, show this gentleman out."

The gentleman was shown out, though it seemed, from his manner, that there still was something which he would have wished to say.

When he had gone the Bishop placed the little leather bag upon a table.

He turned to the Dean. He looked at him, and he said, more in sorrow than in anger,--

"Pettifer, how long does it take you to know a man?"

MR BLOXAM AND THE BRITISH CONSt.i.tUTION

I say that the British const.i.tution is in a shameful condition. I say that any system of legislation which breeds matrimonial discord and sets a husband against his wife, or, what is much worse, a wife against her husband, is a disgrace to civilisation. I say it without hesitation. I have said it before, and I say it again.

Look at me and Mrs Bloxam. From the first I have had difficulties with that woman. She has never properly perceived the inevitable and natural superiority of the husband over the wife. No, not once. I can prove it out of the mouths of a cloud of witnesses. But when it comes to making the husband the laughing-stock of his native land, not to speak of his own parish, and an object of derision in the low columns of a ribald press, then I a.s.sert, emphatically, that something must be done. And it will have to be done, too, and that before very long. I've had enough of it, I do know that. The time has come to throw aside the entangled folds of the cloak of dignity, and to wave the impa.s.sioned arms of a threatening Nemesis. Let her beware. And her aiders and abettors, let them beware also.

I had a difference with our rector. I do not deny that the Reverend George Crookenden has his good points. Every man has. Although Mr Crookenden failed to see that I have mine. Therefore, when it was pointed out that the parish of Copstone was in a state of educational inefficiency, I threw my weight into the scale of intelligence. It was shown that the Church school was a failure. So I said, "Let there be a School Board." And there was a School Board. And what is more, I was put forward as a candidate. I admit that, at first, I was unwilling. I declare, positively, that I refused five distinct and separate times.

But at last I was overpersuaded. I stood. And now I wish to goodness that I hadn't. But who can foresee the march of events as they trickle through the convoluted waterways of an impenetrable thicket?

Mrs Bloxam has always been an enemy to the intellectual advance of the age.

"Bother your books and things!" she would say. "I want a girl with some knowledge of housework. Is she going to get it out of them?"

"Certainly, if she looks for it in the proper quarter."