For the Cause

by Stanley John Weyman

"No," answered the Dean's wife, who was sitting in front of a pile of cards and envelopes. Her curiosity was aroused. But the Dean had a miserable foreboding of what was to come, and writhed upon his seat.

"It is asserted that you are going to give a dance at the Deanery! Ha! ha! ha! I knew that it would amuse you. Fancy a ball at the Deanery of all places!" And Mrs. Vrater laughed with so fair a show of airy enjoyment that the Dean plunged his head into a newspaper, and wished he possessed the self-deceptive powers of the ostrich. This was terrible! What could have induced him to give his consent? As for Mrs. Anson, she dropped the envelope she was folding, and prepared for battle.

"Dear Mrs. Vrater, why should you think it so absurd?" she asked, smiling sweetly, but with color a little heightened.

"At the Deanery? Why, your position, dear Mrs. Anson, and--and--how can you ask? It would have been quite a Church scandal. You would be having the Præcentor hunting next. He would not stick at it," with vicious emphasis. "But I knew that you never dreamt of such a thing."

"Then I fear that you are not among the prophets, for we really propose to venture upon it. As for a Church scandal, Mrs. Vrater, the Dean is the best judge of that."

Whereat the Dean groaned, poor man. Mrs. Vrater regarded him, he regarded himself, as a renegade; but he showed none of a renegade's enthusiasm on his new side.

"You do intend to have a dance!" cried the Canon's wife, with well-affected surprise, considering the circumstances.

"We do indeed. Just a quiet evening for the young people, though we shall hope to see you, dear Mrs. Vrater. Times are changed since we were young," she added sweetly, "and we cannot stand still, however much we may try."

If Mrs. Vrater had a weakness, it was a love for a style of dress which, though severe, was in a degree youthful. Her bonnet while Mrs. Anson spoke seemed to attract and fix that lady's eye. It must be confessed that at Mrs. Vrater's age it was a youthful bonnet. However, she did not appear to heed this, but rose and took her departure with a shocked expression of countenance. She had given the poor Dean, her recreant ally, a very wretched ten minutes; otherwise she had not been successful. When Greek meets Greek neither is wont to get much satisfaction. She said no more there; but she hastened to pay some other friendly calls.

The manner in which the Dean came to give his consent must be told at some length. There is a small house in a quiet corner of the Abbot's Square at Gleicester, which stands back a few yards from the general line of frontage. It is not alone in this respect. The Deanery on the opposite side of the Square, and the Præcentor's house--we beg his pardon, the Præcentory--in the far corner also shrink from the public gaze. But then there is, and very properly, the retirement of exclusiveness. In the small house in question such self-effacement must have a different origin; perhaps in the modesty of conscious insignificance, along with a due sense of the important neighborhood in which No. 13 blooms like a violet almost unseen. For Abbot's Square is virtually the Close of Gleicester--at any rate, there is no other--while No. 13 is little more than a two-storied cottage with a tiled roof, and outside shutters painted green, and a green door with a brass knocker. The path from the wicket-gate to the unpretending porch has been known to be gay with patterns now rather indistinct, composed of the humble oyster-shell; and the occupants have varied from a bachelor organist, or an artist painting the mediæval, to the Dean's favorite verger.