THE BISHOP FINDS A MAN
The Bishop was again visiting at Surley Park. He found his niece's house a restful place of retirement, and his wife had confided to Ella Carruthers that it was such a relief to the dear man to get away from the clergy sometimes.
He was not, however, to be spared the question of the clergy upon this visit, for the Graftons were coming over to consult him about one for Abington, and he had been given due warning that it would be so. A private patron does not always consult his Bishop over his appointments, and it was supposed that his Lordship would not be averse from giving his advice in this instance.
Grafton came over to tea, with Caroline and Beatrix. There were to be guests at the Abbey that evening, or the consultation would have taken place over the dinner table.
Tea was in the garden, which spread in wide cedar-decked lawns round the great white house. The Bishop had a lovely garden of his own, in which he could taste the sweets of retirement. But there was a remoteness about this spreading country garden, with the fields and woods all around it, which he could not get in the high-walled pleasaunce of his palace. He sighed with contentment as he sank down into a large cane chair by the tea table, and said:
"You have a lovely place here, my dear. I sometimes wish that I had set out to be a country gentleman, and dealt with beasts instead of with men."
"You have to deal with both as a landowner," said Ella, "and the men are sometimes more difficult than the beasts."
"The men are beasts sometimes," said the Bishop's wife, who prided herself upon her plain speaking.
"Now, my dear," he said, "we are going to forget all the disputes that beset us as long as we are here, and believe that none of them ever come to disturb the peace of such a place as Surley. Isn't your friend Grafton coming over to see me, Ella? Ah! but here he is with two of those nice girls. What pretty creatures they are! It's a pleasure to look at them."
The Graftons were coming across the wide lawn. They were indeed pleasant-looking objects of the countryside, Grafton in his smart-looking blue flannel suit, the girls in their pretty summer frocks. Presently they were all chatting and laughing over the tea table, and the Bishop was liking them more than ever for the friendly way in which they treated him, and the absence from their demeanour of that paralysing awe which so often irked him on similar occasions.
Tea was over, and Grafton had just introduced the subject about which he had come, when a tall clerical figure was seen advancing across the lawn.
"There's my friend Leadbetter come to see me," said the Bishop. "Do you mind talking over the question before him? He has been in the Diocese much longer than I have, and might be able to help us."
"I don't mind a bit," said Grafton, "but I don't know Mr. Leadbetter yet. I haven't had time to call on him."
The introductions were made. Mr. Leadbetter seemed rather vague as to who the Graftons were; but he seemed to be rather vague about everything except the absorbing subject of Church music. He was a tall thin man, with a pair of short-sighted eyes that peered mildly through big spectacles. His new parishioners had not quite made up their minds what to make of him yet, but those who had had anything to do with him had found him thoughtful and friendly, and were inclined to accept him as an adequate substitute for the old Rector who had lived among them for so long, and whose ways they had known so well.
"We were just beginning to talk about a new Vicar for Abington," said the Bishop, when Mr. Leadbetter had settled in a chair and had accepted a cigarette, which he afterwards surreptitiously got rid of when it had gone out three times, and both ends were in a shockingly untidy state.
"Ah, yes, Abington," he said, "I called at Abington Vicarage the other day. I remember that the note of the doorscraper was C sharp. Mercer is going, he told me. A very agreeable man—Mercer. You will be sorry to lose him, Mr. Grafton."
Beatrix caught the Bishop's eye. There was a twinkle in it which made her want to kiss him. She refrained from this exhibition, but felt she had found a true friend.
"I know who you are, now, of course," said Mr. Leadbetter. "I remember that Mercer mentioned your name when he came over to ask me if I thought there was any chance of his being preferred to this living."
There was a short pause, and then everybody, including the Bishop, laughed. Mr. Leadbetter looked surprised for a moment, and then smiled deprecatingly. "Now I remember," he said, "perhaps you won't be sorry to lose him, after all."
This was all that was said about the retiring Vicar of Abington.
"I haven't many friends among the clergy," said Grafton. "One or two of my friends at Cambridge went into the Church, but I have lost track of them mostly, and I can't think of one who would be likely to want to come here. There is not much to offer, though I should be prepared to add to the stipend for a man who couldn't afford to take it as it is."
He told them to what figure he would be willing to raise it, and the Bishop said that it would give a wider field of choice, as they need not think only about men who had money of their own.
"What sort of a man would you like to have there?" he asked. "Don't tell any one that I asked that question, Leadbetter."
"Certainly not," said the Rector of Surley. "I never make trouble for my Diocesan."
Grafton did not quite see why the question should not have been asked. "All questions of High and Low, and that sort of thing, I leave to you," he said. "The sort of man I should like to have would be one who would get on well with his parishioners, and help to keep us all together."
"Is that the sort of man you want, my dear?" asked the Bishop, turning his beneficent gaze upon Caroline. "I suppose you take an interest in the people around you."
"What you really want is a Christian," said the Bishop's wife uncompromisingly. "I suppose there are a few in the Diocese, though I can't say I have met many of them."
"My dear, my dear!" expostulated the Bishop.
Caroline answered his question. "We haven't been here very long," she said, "but we have made a great many friends among our people. We should like to do a lot for them, and we would help anybody who came there to look after them."
"That is a most laudable statement from a Squire's daughter," said the Bishop. "What sort of things do you want to do for your people?"
"She has all sorts of plans," said Ella. "We have talked them over together. I want to do something of the same sort here when I get to know Mr. Leadbetter more." She threw a look at the mild gentleman, who was just then meditating the final relinquishment of his cigarette. "But there are more people at Abington than there are at Surley."
"Do you mean blankets and coal?" asked the Bishop's wife, "or do you mean Chamber music and lectures on literature?"
Mr. Leadbetter raised himself in his chair. "Ah! Chamber music!" he said, with a gleam of satisfaction behind his spectacles. "If only we could manage some Chamber music!"
"Not a bit of use," said the Bishop's wife. "A nigger minstrel entertainment would go down much better."
"Caroline wants to teach the children Morris dancing and all that sort of thing," said Grafton. "They have it in the village where my brother-in-law lives, and everybody enjoys it immensely."
Caroline leaned forward. "Anything which will make us all happy together," she said. "There are a lot of things which can be done that we should all like doing, and that would go of themselves if they were once started."
Grafton looked at her fondly. "I believe they would all do anything for her, already," he said, "but she doesn't want them to feel that she is patronising them. She wants to play with them just as she has played with her friends in London. That's it, isn't it, Cara?"
"Yes, it's to make us friends," she said.
"I think that healthy amusement is a very good thing for people in a country parish," said the Bishop's wife, "but you must have somebody to lead. Is that what you want your new Vicar to do? If so I should think he would be quite willing to do it. I have never found the clergy unwilling to lead in anything."
"I should say the same about the wives of the clergy," said the Bishop, with another twinkle in his eye, "I think we must find a married Vicar for Abington."
"You didn't find a married Rector for Surley," said his niece, with another provocative look at Mr. Leadbetter, who met it with bland unconsciousness.
"Music is a great thing to bring people together," he said, "and I suppose dancing too. But I have never danced, myself."
The eyes of Beatrix and the Bishop met again, and this time she had great difficulty in preventing herself from embracing him.
"That will only be a part of what we should want to do," Caroline said; "but it would be rather important to have the clergyman on our side. If you want to get people together, he is the best man to do it, and he ought to know them better than anybody."
"Yes, he ought to," said the Bishop's wife.
"He does, if he is the right sort of man," said the Bishop. "I think any incumbent might think himself fortunate in having you to help him in his work, my dear."
Caroline's face fell a little, and the Bishop noticed it. Afterwards he asked his niece why it was.
She thought for a moment, and then looked up with a smile. "To tell you the truth, Uncle," she said, "and to risk your displeasure, Caroline and I are rather fed up with the talk of a clergyman's work. I won't say anything about this place, but at Abington it seemed to mean nothing but interference, and trying to bring people into line all round. Caroline refused to go visiting, as she was asked to do. Of course she does go to see people, just as much perhaps as if she set out to do it as a regular duty, in the way that the Coopers did here, and never ceased talking about and patting themselves on the back for it. But she likes to go where they know she comes as a friend, and will be pleased to see her. She hates to think of that sort of thing as work."
"I don't know why you should think you risk my displeasure in telling me that, my dear," said the Bishop.
A week later the Graftons were invited to dine at the Bishop's Palace. The invitation was sent to Caroline by the Bishop's wife, who indicated in a few terse sentences that a clergyman would be there on inspection, but didn't know it, and was not to know it. If he didn't suit he could go back where he came from, and nobody would be any the worse. Probably her way of putting it had not been authorised by the Bishop, who, however, took Grafton into his library on their arrival, and told him that he thought he had found him the right man.
"He is quite young," he said, "and has not long been married. He has been working hard in a very poor part of London, and I fancy that his health won't stand it much longer. His father was an old friend of mine, and if you like him I think I can persuade him to come to you. He hasn't any money of his own, but what you mentioned the other day will be enough for him. His name is Gerald Prescott."
They went up to the drawing-room, where a little group was standing by one of the windows, admiring the view of the garden, with the piled masonry of the Cathedral rising above the trees which enclosed it. There were four of them. Ella Carruthers and her aunt were talking together apart. The first impression of the group was one of happy youth. They were all talking and laughing together, as if none of them had a care in the world. They were Caroline, the Bishop's chaplain whom she knew already, and Prescott and his wife, with both of whom she had established relations almost upon the first words of introduction.
Grafton's first impression of the man to whom he had been invited to extend his patronage was of one hardly more than a boy. He was very fair, with untidy hair crowning a smooth fresh face, and though his smile was frequent and pleased there was rather a pathetic look as of a tired child about his eyes. His wife looked older than he, though she was actually a few years younger, and not marked by the physical weariness that showed in him. She had rosy cheeks and dark alert eyes, in which there was a motherly look very noticeable when she turned them upon her husband.
Caroline was immensely taken with both of them, they were so simple and so confiding, and so unlike any young couple she had ever met before. Both of them belonged to her world; that was evident by a score of little signs. But they seemed to be quite detached from it, and indeed to have lost interest in it. Their interests were based upon a broad humanity which took no count of social grades. If the Bishop had bethought himself of his niece's protest against the perpetual talk of a clergyman's 'work,' in producing this particular clergyman for inspection, he was abundantly justified by Prescott's conversation. He and his wife both talked of the life they were living, the people they knew, and the things they did, in the same way as they might have talked if he had been an artist, for instance, living in Chelsea. There was the big church in the background, which would correspond to the studio, and what went on there, not to be too much talked about; and all around it the atmosphere of struggle, and tears, and laughter, and the miraculous events that shake the lives of those whose existence is based upon no material certainties, but based all the firmer upon an immoveable trust in a providence that may at any time bring something exciting and beneficial to pass, and at the worst will never let you quite down. The richness of it all was amazing. Instead of the picture of mean streets and drab and sordid lives, into which a man descended from serener heights to fight with poverty and crime, there was a crowded stage of characters of infinite variety, playing with the big things of life which are hidden under a mass of little things in the secured places, but playing with them as the gods might play with them, who must have the biggest toys to amuse them.
"You seem to have a lot of most disreputable acquaintances," said the Bishop's wife, when Prescott had been telling them stories about his friends.
"Oh, yes, we have," he said, with a bright smile. "All the respectable ones go to chapel. But they're so dull that we don't try to get them away. There's no proselytising in our parish."
Caroline began to be afraid, as the life and the pursuits of these young people disclosed themselves, that Abington, with its sparser, more monotonous life, would scarcely attract them, or satisfy them if they came there. But Prescott, who was sitting next to her at dinner, said to her in a low voice: "How do you think she's looking? She's always lived in the country; she's apt to get a little run down in a town."
Caroline reassured him, after a glance at his wife, who looked the picture of health and vigour, and he seemed relieved. "Of course she loves it all," he said. "But it keeps her so on the go. It's very distracting, a town life. Both of us enjoy getting out into the country sometimes. You seem to belong to yourself more."
It was exactly what she had said of herself, finding a town life of such different quality from his distracting for self-possession. "Would you live in the country if you had the choice?" she hazarded.
"I'd live anywhere with her," he said, jerking his head towards his wife with a boyish gesture. "But if I had to choose between the two, for myself, I'd choose a town, because there's more to do. We both of us like to have plenty to do."
After dinner, before the men came up, Caroline sat with Viola Prescott in the window-seat from which they could see the dark mass of the Cathedral rising above the trees into the velvet purple night, and she asked the same question, in a tone that gave Caroline a tightening of the throat.
"He's enjoying every moment of this," she said, "and he wanted just such a change. We haven't been away together since just after Christmas. Do you think he looks very tired? It has been so hot in London."
"I think he looks as if he wants a change," said Caroline. "Fresh air, perhaps, and not quite so much to do."
She sighed. "I was afraid you would say that," she said. "The Bishop said it too. He's a lovely sort of Bishop, isn't he? So human, and so kind, and not too churchy. It would be rather peaceful to be in his Diocese."
"Would you like to live in the country?" Caroline asked her.
"I should love it. I always did live in the country before we were married. I used to go and stay with an aunt in London sometimes, and was always glad to get back. I don't care about London amusements. But we don't have to bother ourselves with them in our part of London. I do like that, better than I thought I should, because you see people in a more natural way than at the other end of London. Gerry feels like that too. I can hardly ever drag him up to see our relations, and they hardly ever come to see us."
"I feel just the same, about our part of London," said Caroline. "I've persuaded father to give up our house there, because I like living in the country much better. It's partly because of the people, as you say. You get to know all sorts better, in the country. I have a lot of friends among the people in our village, just as you have in your parish, though they live rather quieter lives than yours seem to, and are not so—well, so disreputable."
Both of them laughed, with a glance at the Bishop's wife. "They're not really disreputable," Viola said; "only most of them don't know whether they are going to have anything to eat to-morrow, or the next day. So they have to keep cheerful while they have got enough. Still, it is rather a rackety life. I think I should like to be among quieter people, for a change; and of course one does miss the sweet air and the peace of the country. I wouldn't mind a bit for myself if I didn't think Gerry ought to have a rest. He isn't very strong, poor darling, and he works too hard."
It was the first time that work had been mentioned.
"And he will invite such a lot of people to meals," she went on; "and there isn't always enough for them. And then of course he goes without."
"I expect you do too, if there isn't enough," said Caroline, smiling at her.
"Oh, I'm as strong as a horse," she said. "But we haven't got much money, you know, and housekeeping is rather difficult sometimes."
The Bishop's wife sailed over to them. "Are you persuading her to make her husband come to Abington?" she asked. "She ought to. He can't stand that life much longer."
Caroline looked up at her in some confusion.
"Oh, I know nothing was to be said about it till after you had seen whether you liked them or not," she said. "But of course you like them. I do myself, though I should like to smack them both and send them to bed."
"We want a Vicar at Abington," said Caroline. "Father is the patron of the living. Do persuade your husband to come there."
Viola's eyes filled with tears, and she took Caroline's hand. "Oh, my dear, it's just what I should love for him," she said. "He'll get enough to eat, and time to rest sometimes."
So when the men came up they found it all settled for them.