For the Cause

by Stanley John Weyman

The sound of a hasty step upon the gravel made him turn. It was Mrs. Anson, looking a little perturbed--by her hurry, perhaps. Her husband lifted one of the lanterns from the case with the end of his stick, and contemplated it with a good deal of contempt.

"My dear," he said, "what in the name of goodness are these foolish things for?"

"Well, you know the house is not very large," she began, "and the supper will occupy the dining-room and breakfast-room--it would be a pity to cramp the supper, my dear, when we have such beautiful plate, and so few chances of showing it--and conservatory we have none so----"

"Yes, yes, my dear, true," broke in the Dean impatiently; "but what of these? what of these?" He raised the poor lantern anew.

"Well, we thought it would be nice to--to light the cloisters with these lanterns, and so form a conservatory of a kind. Now that the cloisters are cleaned and restored they will look so pretty, and the people can walk there between the dances. I thought it would be an excellent arrangement, and--and save us pulling your study about."

There was an awful pause. The lantern, held at arm's length on the ferrule of the Dean's stick, shook like an aspen leaf.

"You thought--it would be nice--to light the cloisters--with Chinese lanterns! The cloisters of Gleicester Cathedral, Mrs. Anson! Good heavens!"

No mere words can express the tone of amazed disapprobation, of horror, disgust, and wrath combined, in which the Dean, whose face was purple with the same emotions, spoke these words. He dashed the lantern to the ground, and set one foot upon it in a manner not unworthy of St. George--the Chinese lantern being a natural symbol of the dragon.

"It would be rank sacrilege; sacrilege, Mrs. Anson. Never let me hear of it again. I am shocked that you should have proposed such a thing; and I see now what I feared before, that I was very wrong in giving my consent to a frivolity unbecoming our position. You cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. But I never dreamt it would come to this. Let me hear no more of it, I beg."

The Dean, as he walked away after these decisive words, felt very sore--and not only about the knee, to do him justice. He repeated over and over again to himself the proverb about touching pitch. Until the last few days, no one had cherished his position more highly. And now his very wife was so far demoralized as to have suggested things dreadful to him and subversive of it. He had given way to the Canon and that little witch at No. 13, and this was the first result. What a peck of troubles, he said to himself, this wretched dance was bringing upon him! He was sick of it, sick to death of it, he told himself. So sick, indeed, that when he was out of his wife's hearing he groaned aloud with a great sense of self-pity, and almost brought himself in his disgust to believe that Mrs. Vrater would have been a more fit and sympathetic helpmeet for him.