In a fit of exasperation he threw himself so vigorously into the business of forcing the bureau into the house that when it was inside it looked like a ruined abbey on the afternoon of a Bank Holiday.
"It had better be taken up into the garrets for the present," he said, grimly. "It can be mended later on."
The comparison of his work to that bureau haunted John at his own writing-table for the rest of the morning; thinking of the Bishop of Silchester's objection to Laurence, he found it hard to make the various bishops in his play as unsympathetic as they ought to be for dramatic contrast; then he remembered that after all it had been due to the Bishop of Silchester's strong action that Laurence had come to Ambles: the stream of insulting epithets for bishops flowed as strongly as ever, and he worked in a justifiable pun upon the name of Pierre Cauchon, his chief episcopal villain.
"I wonder, if I were allowed to, whether I would condemn Laurence to be burnt alive. Wasn't there a Saint Laurence who was grilled? I really believe I would almost grill him, I really do. There's something exceptionally irritating to me about that man's whole personality. And I'm not at all sure I approve of a clergyman's giving up his beliefs. One might get a line out of that, by the way—something about a weathercock and a church steeple. I don't think a clergyman ought to surrender so easily. It's his business not to be influenced by modern thought. This passion for realism is everywhere.... Thank goodness, I've been through it and got over it and put it behind me forever. It's a most unprofitable creed. What was my circulation as a realist? I once reached four thousand. What's four thousand? Why, it isn't half the population of Galton. And now Laurence Armitage takes up with it after being a vicar for ten years. Idiot! Religion isn't realistic: it never was realistic. Religion is the entertainment of man's spirituality just as the romantic drama is the entertainment of his mentality. I don't read Anatole France for my representation of Joan of Arc. What business has Laurence to muddle his head with—what's his name—Colonel Ingoldsby—Ingersoll—when he ought to be thinking about his Harvest Festival? And then he has the effrontery to compare my work with that bureau! If that's all his religion meant to him—that ridiculous piece of gimcrack gothic, no wonder it wouldn't hold together. Why, the green fumed oak of a sentimental rationalism would be better than that. Confound Laurence! I knew this would happen when he came. He's taken my mind completely off my own work. I can't write a word this morning."
John rushed away from his manuscript and weeded furiously down a secluded border until the gardener told him he had weeded away the autumn-sown sweet-peas that were coming along nicely and standing the early frosts a treat.
"I'm not even allowed to weed my own garden now," John thought, burking the point at issue; and his disillusionment became so profound that he actually invited Harold to go for a walk with him.
"Can I bring my blow-pipe?" asked the young naturalist, gleefully.
"You don't want to load yourself up with soap and water," said John. "Keep that till you come in."
"My South American blow-pipe, Uncle John. It's a real one which father sent home. It belonged to a little Indian boy, but the darts aren't poisoned, father told mother."
"Don't you be too sure," John advised him. "Explorers will say anything."