The Rough Road. Locke William John

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СКАЧАТЬ sitting in the shade, with his hands clasped behind his head. Tea was over. Mrs. Conover, thin and faded, still sat by the little table, wondering whether she might now blow out the lamp beneath the silver kettle. Sir Archibald Bruce, a neighbouring landowner, and his wife had come, bringing their daughter Dorothy to play tennis. The game had already started on the court some little distance off – the players being Dorothy, Peggy and a couple of athletic, flannel-clad parsons. Marmaduke Trevor reposed on a chair under the lee of Lady Bruce. He looked very cool and spick and span in a grey cashmere suit, grey shirt, socks and tie, and grey suède shoes. He had a weak, good-looking little face and a little black moustache turned up at the ends. He was discoursing to his neighbour on Palestrina.

      The Dean’s proclamation had been elicited by some remark of Sir Archibald.

      “I wonder how you have stuck it for so long,” said the latter. He had been a soldier in his youth and an explorer, and had shot big game.

      “I haven’t your genius, my dear Bruce, for making myself uncomfortable,” replied the Dean.

      “You were energetic enough when you first came here,” said Sir Archibald. “We all thought you a desperate fellow who was going to rebuild the cathedral, turn the Close into industrial dwellings, and generally play the deuce.”

      The Dean sighed pleasantly. He had snowy hair and a genial, florid, clean-shaven face.

      “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.

      “You are quite an intelligent man, Bruce,” he said, with a sudden whimsicality, “but I don’t think you would ever understand.”

      The set of tennis being over, Peggy, flushed and triumphant, rushed into the party in the shade.

      “Mr. Petherbridge and I have won – six – three,” she announced. The old gentlemen smiled and murmured their congratulations. She swung to the tea-table some paces away, and plucked Marmaduke by the sleeve, interrupting him in the middle of an argument. He rose politely.

      “Come and play.”

      “My dear,” he said, “I’m such a duffer at games.”

      “Never mind; you’ll learn in time.”

      He drew out a grey silk handkerchief as if ready to perspire at the first thought of it. “Tennis makes one so dreadfully hot,” said he.

      Peggy tapped the point of her foot irritably, but she laughed as she turned to Lady Bruce.

      “What’s the good of being engaged to a man if he can’t play tennis with you?”

      “There are other things in life besides tennis, my dear,” replied Lady Bruce.

      The girl flushed, but being aware that a pert answer turneth away pleasant invitations, said nothing. She nodded and went off to her game, and informing Mr. Petherbridge that Lady Bruce was a platitudinous old tabby, flirted with him up to the nice limits of his parsonical dignity. But Marmaduke did not mind.

      “Games are childish and somewhat barbaric. Don’t you think so, Lady Bruce?”

      “Most young people seem fond of them,” replied the lady. “Exercise keeps them in health.”

      “It all depends,” he argued. “Often they get exceedingly hot, then they sit about and catch their death of cold.”

      “That’s very true,” said Lady Bruce. “It’s what I’m always telling Sir Archibald about golf. Only last week he caught a severe chill in that very way. I had to rub his chest with camphorated oil.”

      “Just as my poor dear mother used to do to me,” said Marmaduke.

      There followed a conversation on ailments and their treatment, in which Mrs. Conover joined. Marmaduke was quite happy. He knew that the two elderly ladies admired the soundness of his views and talked to him as to one of themselves.

      “I’m sure, my dear Marmaduke, you’re very wise to take care of yourself,” said Lady Bruce, “especially now, when you have the responsibilities of married life before you.”

      Marmaduke curled himself up comfortably in his chair. СКАЧАТЬ