“A most fortunate suggestion—admirable in every way. It may strengthen his interest in the church; and it must certainly be beneficial to him to associate with correct society after his wandering and Bohemian life. I hear all kinds of strange tales of his hobnobbing with this Mr. Westray, the clerk of the works, and with other persons entirely out of his own rank. Mrs. Flint, who happened to be visiting a poor woman in a back lane, assures me that she has every reason to believe that he spent an hour or more in the clerk’s house, and even ate there. They say he positively ate tripe.”
“Well, it will certainly do him good to meet the Bishop,” the lady said. “That would make four with ourselves; and we can ask Mrs. Bulteel. We need not ask her husband; he is painfully rough, and the Bishop might not like to meet a brewer. It will not be at all strange to ask her alone; there is always the excuse of not liking to take a businessman away from his work in the middle of the day.”
“That would be five; we ought to make it up to six. I suppose it would not do to ask this architect-fellow or Mr. Sharnall.”
“My dear! what can you be thinking of? On no account whatever. Such guests would be most inappropriate.”
The Rector looked so properly humble and cast down at this reproof that his wife relented a little.
“Not that there is any harm in asking them, but they would be so very ill at ease themselves, I fear, in such surroundings. If you think the number should be even, we might perhaps ask old Noot. He is a gentleman, and would pass as your chaplain, and say grace.”
Thus the party was made up, and Lord Blandamer accepted, and Mrs. Bulteel accepted; and there was no need to trouble about the curate’s acceptance—he was merely ordered to come to lunch. But, after all had gone so well up to this point, the unexpected happened—the Bishop could not come. He regretted that he could not accept the hospitality so kindly offered him by Canon Parkyn; he had an engagement which would occupy him for any spare time that he would have in Cullerne; he had made other arrangements for lunch; he would call at the Rectory half an hour before the service.
The Rector and his wife sat in the “study,” a dark room on the north side of the rectory-house, made sinister from without by dank laurestinus, and from within by glass cases of badly-stuffed birds. A Bradshaw lay on the table before them.
“He cannot be driving from Carisbury,” Mrs. Parkyn said. “Dr. Willis does not keep at all the same sort of stables that his predecessor kept. Mrs. Flint, when she was attending the annual Christian Endeavour meeting at Carisbury, was told that Dr. Willis thinks it wrong that a Bishop should do more in the way of keeping carriages than is absolutely necessary for church purposes. She said she had passed the Bishop’s carriage herself, and that the coachman was a most unkempt creature, and the horses two wretched screws.”
“I heard much the same thing,” assented the Rector. “They say he would not have his own coat of arms painted on the carriage, for what was there already was quite good enough for him. He cannot possibly be driving here from Carisbury; it is a good twenty miles.”
“Well, if he does not drive, he must come by the 12:15 train; that would give him two hours and a quarter before the service. What business can he have in Cullerne? Where can he be lunching? What can he be doing with himself for two mortal hours and a quarter?”
Here was another conundrum to which probably only one person in Cullerne town could have supplied an answer, and that was Mr. Sharnall. A letter had come for the organist that very day:
The Palace,
Carisbury.My dear Sharnall,
(I had almost written “My dear Nick”; forty years have made my pen a little stiff, but you must give me your official permission to write “My dear Nick” the very next time.) You may have forgotten my hand, but you will not have forgotten me. Do you know, it is I, Willis, who am your new Bishop? It is only a fortnight since I learnt that you were so near me—
“Quam dulce amicitias,
Redintegrare nitidas”—and the very first point of it is that I am going to sponge on you, and ask myself to lunch. I am coming to Cullerne at 12:45 today fortnight for the Confirmation, and have to be at the Rectory at 2:30, but till then an old friend, Nicholas Sharnall, will give me food and shelter, will he not? Make no excuses, for I shall not accept them; but send me word to say that in this you will not fail of your duty, and believe me always to be
There was something that moved strangely inside Mr. Sharnall’s battered body as he read the letter—an upheaval of emotion; the child’s heart within the man’s; his young hopeful self calling to his old hopeless self. He sat back in his armchair, and shut his eyes, and the organ-loft in a little college chapel came back to him, and long, long practisings, and Willis content to stand by and listen as long as he should play. How it pleased Willis to stand by, and pull the stops, and fancy he knew something of music! No, Willis never knew any music, and yet he had a good taste, and loved a fugue.
There came to him country rambles and country churches and Willis with an A.B.C. of Gothic Architecture, trying to tell an
