“In good health? Then—then he didn’t mention anything to you about his life prospects?”
“I can’t say that he did; but he always seemed to me to enjoy good health. Why, was there anything wrong?”
“My Lord, I think this ought to be confidential, if you don’t mind. But since you knew him so well I think it’s only fair to mention to you that Mottram had misgivings about his health.” And he narrated the story of Mottram’s singular interview at the Indescribable offices. The Bishop looked grave when he had finished.
“Dear, dear, I’d no notion of that; no notion at all. And it’s not clear even now what was wrong with him? Well, of course that alters things. It must be a grave temptation for people who are suffering from a malignant disease, especially if it’s a painful one; pain clouds the reason so, doesn’t it? I wish I’d realized that he was in trouble, though it’s very little one can do. But that’s just like him; he was always a bit of a stoic; fine, in a rugged sort of way. ‘It never did any good meeting troubles half way,’ he used to say to me. Well, money can’t do everything for us.”
“He was enormously rich, I suppose?”
“Hardly that. He was very comfortably off, though. There will be a windfall, I suppose, coming to somebody.”
“He never mentioned to you, I suppose, what he meant to do with his money?”
“Well, of course, he used to say half-jokingly that he was going to provide for us; but I don’t think he meant us to take that seriously. He had a kind of hankering after religion, you see, but he didn’t get on well with religious people as a general thing. The Anglicans, he said, were all at sixes and sevens, and he couldn’t bear a church which didn’t know its own mind. The non-conformists, he said, did no sort of good in the town; all those fine chapels, and only thirty or forty people in each of them on a Sunday morning. He was a little unjust, I think, to the non-conformists; they do a great deal of good, some of them. And about the Salvation Army he was extraordinarily bitter. So he used to say he’d sooner his money went to us than to any of the others. But I think that was only an ironic way he had with him; people who have made a lot of money are often fond of talking about what they’re going to do with it. Of course it would have made a lot of difference to us; but I don’t think he meant to be taken seriously.”
“Well, I’m very much obliged to Your Lordship; I think, perhaps, I ought to be”——
“What, going away, and dinner on the table? No, no, Mr. ‘Brendan,’ that isn’t how we treat our guests at Pullford. Just you come along, now, and be introduced to some of the reverend clergy. I know the Load of Mischief, and those chops! Come on, and we’ll send you off in better trim than you came.” It was evident that there was no help for it; Angela must wait.