They sat, clustered together, at the end of a long oak refectory table. The Bishop himself was a teetotaler, but there was good claret and, at the end, excellent port. The only piece of colour on the table was a bowl of dark-blue glass piled with fruit. The only ornament in the room was a beautifully carved silver crucifix on the black oak mantelpiece. The sun danced across the stained floor with every pattern and form of light.
Brandon could not remember a more unpleasant meal in that room; he could not, indeed, remember ever having had an unpleasant meal there before. The Bishop talked, as he always did, in a most pleasant and easy fashion. He talked about the nectarines and plums that were soon to glorify his garden walls, about the pears and apples in his orchard, about the jokes that old Puddifoot made when he came over and examined his rheumatic limbs. He gently chaffed Ponting about his punctuality, neatness and general dislike of violent noises, and he bade Appleford to tell the housekeeper, Mrs. Brenton, how especially good to-day was the fish soufflé. All this was all it had ever been; nothing could have been easier and more happy. But on other days it had always been Brandon who had thrown back the ball for the Bishop to catch. Whoever the other guest might be, it was always Brandon who took the lead, and although he might be a little ponderous and slow in movement, he supplied the Bishop's conversational needs quite adequately.
And to-day it was Ronder; from the first, without any ostentation or presumption, with the utmost naturalness, he led the field. To understand the full truth of this occasion it must be known that Mr. Ponting had, for a considerable number of years past, cherished a deep but private detestation of the Archdeacon. It was hard to say wherein that hatred had had it inception--probably in some old, long-forgotten piece of cheerful patronage on Brandon's part; Mr. Ponting was of those who consider and dwell and dwell again, and he had, by this time, dwelt upon the Archdeacon so long and so thoroughly that he knew and resented the colour of every one of the Archdeacon's waistcoat buttons. He was, perhaps, quick to perceive to-day that a mightier than the Archdeacon was here; or it may have been that he was well aware of what had been happening in Polchester during the last weeks, and was even informed of the incidents of the last three days.
However that may be, he did from the first pay an almost exaggerated deference to Ronder's opinion, drew him into the conversation at every possible opportunity, with such, interjections as "How true! How very true! Don't you think so, Canon Ronder?" or "What has been your experience in such a case, Canon Ronder?" or "I think, my lord, that Canon Ronder told me that he knows that place well," and disregarding entirely any remarks that Brandon might happen to make.
No one could have responded more brilliantly to this opportunity than did Ronder; indeed the Bishop, who was his host at the Palace to-day for the first time, said after his departure, "That's a most able man, most able. Lucky indeed for the diocese that it has secured him...a delightful fellow."
No one in the world could have been richer in anecdotes than Ronder, anecdotes of precisely the kind for the Bishop's taste, not too worldly, not too clerical, amusing without being broad, light and airy, but showing often a fine scholarship and a wise and thoughtful experience of foreign countries. The Bishop had not laughed so heartily for many a day. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he cried at the anecdote of the two American ladies in Siena. "That's good, indeed...that's very good. Did you get that, Ponting? Dear me, that's perfectly delightful!" A little tear of shining pleasure trickled down his cheek. "Really, Canon, I've never heard anything better."
Brandon thought Ronder's manners outrageous. Poor Bishop! He was indeed failing that he could laugh so heartily at such pitiful humour. He tried, to show his sense of it all by grimly pursuing his food and refusing even the ghost of a chuckle, but no one was perceiving him, as he very bitterly saw. The Bishop, it may be, saw it too, for at last he turned to Brandon and said:
"But come, Archdeacon. I was forgetting. You wrote to me s-something about that Jubilee-music in the Cathedral. You find that Ryle is making rather a m-mess of things, don't you?"
Brandon was deeply offended. Of what was the Bishop thinking that he could so idly drag forward the substance of an entirely private letter, without asking permission, into the public air? Moreover, the last thing that he wanted was that Ronder should know that he had been working behind Ryle's back. Not that he was in the least ashamed of what he had done, but here was precisely the thing that Ronder would like to use and make something of. In any case, it was the principle of the thing. Was Ronder henceforth to be privy to everything that passed between himself and the Bishop?
He never found it easy to veil his feelings, and he looked now, as Ponting delightedly perceived, like an overgrown, sulky schoolboy.