“Human nature is a queer thing,� said he to Lewis—he called it “natur’.� “Here are these races the whole county is mad about. You think it’s a comedy, hey, boy? Well, it’s not. It’s a tragedy—a tragedy, d’ye understand?�
“There seems to be a fight over it all around,� said Lewis, who was alive to everything. “The parson’s against it. He’s a good man—ain’t he, Mr. Bulstrode?�
“Yes, by Heaven he is!� cried Bulstrode, taking a huge pinch of snuff. “And let me tell you, I fear that man, just as I fear and reverence a good woman, not on account of his brains, although they are fairly good, but because of his superlative honesty. As for that lunkhead of a bishop, I protest he is wearisome to me. Mrs. Blair—Heaven bless her!—beguiled me into going to hear the creetur’ preach�—Bulstrode never could get such words as “creature� and “nature� and “figure� right—“and, upon my soul, I never heard such a farrago since God made me. He attempts to reason, the creetur’ does, and talks about ecclesiastical history, and he’s got a smattering of what he calls theology and canon law. Lord help the fools in this world! For every fool that dies two are born.�
Lewis was accustomed to hearing bishops spoken of disrespectfully, and therefore took no exception to it.
“Mr. Shapleigh says,� he continued, after another effort to see how far he could get out of the window without falling and breaking his neck, “Mr. Shapleigh says the bishop thinks Mr. Conyers has gone too far in opposing the races.�
Here Lewis nearly succeeded in tumbling out, and Bulstrode caught him by the leg in the nick of time.
“God bless the boy! can’t you keep quiet half a minute? Of course he has, to please that old fool, with his defective quantities and his notion that he is the wisest man that ever lived. However, when I went to hear that precious sermon I sat right under the creetur’, flapping about the pulpit in his white nightgown, and I took snuff until I nearly made him sneeze his head off. The day I was asked to dinner with him by that damned Mrs. Shapleigh, the ass sought me out—he’d heard something of Mr. Bulstrode! Ha! ha! He began talking what he thought was philosophy, and he doesn’t know a syllogism from a churn-dasher, so I couldn’t but trip him up. I thought it wasn’t worth while to try him with anything that wasn’t rudimentary, so I said to him, ‘Do you believe in the Aristotelian system?’ It seems he’d heard of old Aristotle somewhere or other, so he says, smirking and mighty polite: ‘Of course, I admit the soundness of it, Mr. Bulstrode.’ ‘And,’ said I very crossly, ‘I suppose you believe in a revealed religion, don’t you?’ ‘O—w!’ says the bishop, exactly as if I had stuck a pin in him. ‘My cloth, sir, is answer enough to that.’ Then I remarked: ‘You’ve got to accept Thomas Aquinas too—for if ever a bridge was made between natural and revealed religion, old Thomas has made it.’ You ought to have seen his countenance then. It shut him up for at least five minutes, during which he never opened his mouth except to put something in it. Then he began to tell me some rigmarole about Anglican theology, and I banged my fist down on the table, and said, ‘Who consecrated Parker? Answer me that.’� Bulstrode shouted rather than said this, his recollection of the bishop’s discomfiture was so keen. “I know Mrs. Shapleigh said I behaved like an old ruffian to the bishop, but, dang me, the bishop’s an ass!�
“I believe you think everybody’s an ass except the good folks,� said Lewis.
“I believe I do,� answered Bulstrode, taking another gigantic pinch of snuff. “But I told you there was a tragedy about those Campdown races, and so there is. Now, this is it. Skelton has made up his mind to ruin Blair. He needn’t trouble himself—Blair will do the work fast enough without anybody’s help. But our respected friend and benefactor means to have a hand in it. That’s the meaning of the money he is pouring out like water, and that’s why Blair is making such a fight. But that poor wife of his—Lewis, Lewis, if you win that match you’ll stab that gentle creature to the heart!�
Lewis gazed at Bulstrode with wide-open eyes. He was naturally tender and reverent to women, and the idea of inflicting pain upon any one of them was hateful to him. All at once the pleasure in the race seemed to vanish. What pleasure could it be when he came galloping in ahead, if poor Mrs. Blair were ruined and wretched and broken-hearted? He stopped his acrobatic performances and sat quite still in the window, looking sadly into Bulstrode’s face.