“I was appointed very young—six-and-thirty—and I thought I could fight against the centuries. As the years went on I found I couldn’t. The grey changelessness of things got hold of me, incorporated me into them. When I die—for I hope I shan’t have to resign through doddering senility—my body will be buried there”—he jerked his head slightly towards the cathedral—“and my dust will become part and parcel of the fabric—like that of many of my predecessors.”
“That’s all very well,” said Sir Archibald, “but they ought to have caught you before this petrification set in, and made you a bishop.”
It was somewhat of an old argument, for the two were intimates. The Dean smiled and shook his head.
“You know I declined——”
“After you had become petrified.”
“Perhaps so. It is not a place where ambitions can attain a riotous growth.”
“I call it a rotten place,” said the elderly worldling. “I wouldn’t live in it myself for twenty thousand a year.”
“Lots like you said the same in crusading times—Sir Guy de Chevenix, for instance, who was the Lord, perhaps, of your very Manor, and an amazing fire-eater—but—see the gentle irony of it—there his bones lie, at peace for ever, in the rotten place, with his effigy over them cross-legged and his dog at his feet, and his wife by his side. I think he must sometimes look out of Heaven’s gate down on the cathedral and feel glad, grateful—perhaps a bit wistful—if the attribution of wistfulness, which implies regret, to a spirit in Paradise doesn’t savour of heresy——”
“I’m going to be cremated,” interrupted Sir Archibald, twirling his white moustache.
The Dean smiled and did not take up the cue. The talk died. It was a drowsy day. The Dean went off into a little reverie. Perhaps his old friend’s reproach was just. Dean of a great cathedral at thirty-six, he had the world of dioceses at his feet. Had he used to the full the brilliant talents with which he started? He had been a good Dean, a capable, business-like Dean. There was not a stone of the cathedral that he did not know and cherish. Under his care the stability of every part of the precious fabric had been assured for a hundred years. Its financial position, desperate on his appointment, was now sound. He had come into a scene of petty discords and jealousies; for many years there had been a no more united chapter in any cathedral close in England. As an administrator he had been a success. The devotion of his life to the cathedral had its roots deep in spiritual things. For the greater glory of God had the vast edifice been erected, and for the greater glory of God had he, its guardian, reverently seen to its preservation and perfect appointment. Would he have served God better by pursuing the ambitions of youth? He could have had his bishopric; but he knew that the choice lay between him and Chanways, a flaming spirit, eager for power, who hadn’t the sacred charge of a cathedral, and he declined. And now Chanways was a force in the Church and the country, and was making things hum. If he, Conover, after fifteen years of Durdlebury, had accepted, he would have lost the power to make things hum. He would have made a very ordinary, painstaking bishop, and his successor at Durdlebury might possibly have regarded that time-worn wonder of spiritual beauty merely as a stepping-stone to higher sacerdotal things. Such a man, he considered, having once come under the holy glamour of the cathedral, would have been guilty of the Unforgivable Sin. He had therefore saved two unfortunate situations.