At the word "Pybus" there was an electric silence in the room. The Bishop tore open the letter and read it. He half started from his chair with a little exclamation of distress and grief.
"Please excuse me," he said, turning to them. "I must leave you for a moment and speak to the bearer of this note. Poor Morrison...at last... he's gone!--Pybus!..."
The Archdeacon, in spite of himself, half rose and stared across at Ronder. Pybus! The living at last was vacant.
A moment later he felt deeply ashamed. In that sunlit room the bright green of the outside world quivering in pools of colour upon the pure space of the white walls spoke of life and beauty and the immortality of beauty.
It was hard to think of death there in such a place, but one must think of it and consider, too, Morrison, who had been so good a fellow and loved the world, and all the things in it, and had thought of heaven also in the spare moments that his energy left him.
A great sportsman he had been, with a famous breed of bull-terrier, and anxious to revive the South Glebeshire Hunt; very fine, too, in that last terrible year when the worst of all mortal diseases had leapt upon his throat and shaken him with agony and the imminent prospect of death-- shaken him but never terrified him. Brandon summoned before him that broad, jolly, laughing figure, summoned it, bowed to its fortitude and optimism, then, as all men must, at such a moment, considered his own end; then, having paid his due to Morrison, returned to the great business of the--Living.
They were gathered together in the hall now. The Bishop had known Morrison well and greatly liked him, and he could think of nothing but the man himself. The question of the succession could not come near him that day, and as he stood, a little white-haired figure, tottering on his stick in the flagged hall, he seemed already to be far from the others, to be caught already half-way along the road that Morrison was now travelling.
Both Brandon and Ronder felt that it was right for them to go, although on a normal day they would have stayed walking in the garden and talking for another three-quarters of an hour until it was time to catch the three- thirty train from Carpledon. Mr. Ponting settled the situation.
"His lordship," he said, "hopes that you will let Bassett drive you into Polchester. There is the little wagonette; Bassett must go, in any case, to get some things. It is no trouble, no trouble at all."
They, of course, agreed, although for Brandon at any rate there would be many things in the world pleasanter than sitting with Ronder in a small wagonette for more than an hour. He also had no liking for Bassett, the Bishop's coachman for the last twenty years, a native of South Glebeshire, with all the obstinacy, pride and independence that that definition includes.