THE NEW DEAN
The days grew into weeks, and the weeks into months, but nothing
occurred to lessen my misery. As I look back upon that hideous time, I
can recall nothing but one long dreary stretch of unalloyed
wretchedness. I resumed my usual round of duties, domestic and
parochial; but nothing either in my own estate or in the surrounding
neighbourhood afforded me the slightest interest. And for all this, I
had to thank Frank Wildacre. This thought was always more or less with
me.
But about a year and a half after Fay left me, a most unexpected thing
happened.
Annabel came into the library one morning obviously bursting with news.
"Oh, Reggie, what do you think? I have just been to the Rectory to see
Mr. Blathwayte about some parish matters, and he has told me a most
exciting piece of news, and has asked me to come and tell you, because
he is too busy to do so this morning, but he will come to tea this
afternoon and consult you about it."
My heart began to beat furiously. Surely any exciting news that Arthur
received must be in some way connected with Fay. I never wrote to her,
nor she to me: I was too proud to do anything but submit to her
decision on that point. I was also too proud to ask Arthur direct
questions about her: but with a delicate tact, for which beforehand I
should never have given him credit, he gave me apparently casual
information about her from time to time. I was as bitterly angry with
her as ever; I was as far from forgiving her as ever: but I could not
forget that she was my wife, and I still loved her as I loved my own
soul.
"Well, what is it?" I asked, stifling the trembling of my voice as best
I could.
"Guess," said Annabel. "It's really the most wonderful thing!"
I was amazed--as, indeed, I often was in those days--at my sister's
unabated appetite for the trivial. After such an unprecedented
cataclysm as Fay's departure, the day of small things had gone by as I
thought for ever: and yet, though it had completely overturned my
world, it had left Annabel pretty much as it found her. It is at times
such as this that the unutterable loneliness of the human soul becomes
almost overwhelming, and one realises that the heart knoweth its own
bitterness, and a stranger--nay, not only a stranger, but also one's
nearest and dearest--cannot intermeddle with its joy. True, there was
no longer any joy in my heart for anybody to intermeddle with: but in
its bitterness it stood utterly alone.
To me Fay, in spite of my anger against her, was still sacrosanct.
Though fallen from her original estate, she was yet, in my eyes, an
angel. But to Annabel she was nothing but a naughty child that needed
punishment; and my sister troubled herself about her no more than she
would about a naughty child. Therefore I could not make trivial and
absurd guesses about anything concerning Fay.
"I can't guess," I said rather shortly: "please tell me."
"Mr. Blathwayte has been offered the Deanery of Lowchester."
My heart sank down into my boots again. What were Deaneries or even
Archbishoprics compared with Fay? Then I blamed myself for my
selfishness, and tried to atone for it. "What a splendid thing for old
Arthur!" I said: "I am awfully glad. Tell me all he said."
Whereupon Annabel proceeded to obey me more or less implicitly,
interspersing Arthur's quoted remarks with innumerable commentaries of
her own.
"It will be a splendid thing for him," she said in conclusion, "as he
is really a most able and gifted man, and such a capital organiser, and
there is no proper scope for him in a small village like this. I've
liked to have him here, but I have always felt he was a bit buried."
"Do you remember Mrs. Figshaw?" said I, "who kept saying that her
daughter wanted a _scoop_? I agree with you that Blathwayte is like
Mrs. Figshaw's daughter: he wants a scoop badly."
"_Scope_, Reggie; not _scoop_," corrected Annabel. I should have been
disappointed in her if she had not done so. At least I should have
been disappointed a year ago: but even Annabel had ceased to amuse me
now.
"We shall miss Blathwayte," I remarked: "at least you will."
"But why me particularly? Surely the Rector is more your friend than
mine."
"I know that. But I have lost the power of missing any person save
one. In my case all lesser griefs have been swallowed up in the one
great one."
"Poor Reggie! But it's a pity to feel like that, and all the same I
feel sure you'll miss Mr. Blathwayte more than you think you will when
the time comes. And I shall miss him too, as he has always been so
good in being guided by me, and has followed my advice in everything
connected with the parish."
I doubted this, though I should have considered it most unfair to
Arthur to say so: but there was a quiet obstinacy about him which might
raise him at times even to the height of standing up against Annabel.
Fortunately, however, she had never found it out and I should have been
the last to enlighten her.
"Of course," she continued, "cathedrals and daily services and things
like that are apt to lure men into ritualism: I only hope Mr.
Blathwayte will have the strength of mind to resist them: and you must
be very careful, Reggie, in selecting a new rector not to get any one
with leanings that way. I could never allow anything ritualistic in
our Church."
I wondered she didn't say "my Church," and have done with it: but I
hadn't the heart to chaff her as I used to do in those happy bygone
days, ages ago, before ever the Wildacres came to Restham: so I let it
pass.
"I expect I shall put the matter into the Bishop's hands," I said: "I
don't feel competent to select a spiritual pastor for Restham or
anywhere else."
"You selected Mr. Blathwayte, and he has been a great success. It is a
pity to get into the habit of thinking you can't do anything, Reggie,
because you really do some things extremely well."
"But not the things I care about," I added bitterly, "And in this case
I haven't another Arthur up my sleeve."
"The Bishop may have one," suggested Annabel encouragingly.
"Probably. He certainly has more room up his sleeve than I have. I
wonder if that was the origin of Bishops having such large
sleeves--because they had always got something up them."
Annabel was as literal as ever. "I don't think so, Reggie; I really
don't know the origin of Bishops having those full sleeves. I know
when it was the fashion for ladies to have large sleeves they were
called 'Bishops' sleeves' after the Bishops; but why the Bishops
originally had them I haven't a notion. I must try to find out. It is
so interesting and instructive to learn the reason and the origin of
things like that. But Deans don't have large sleeves, do they?" she
added, her wandering thoughts turning once more Arthurwards.
"No; but they have beautiful arrangements about the legs--aprons and
breeches and gaiters, and goodness knows what! They are Bishops below
the waist and men above it, like the Centaurs, don't you know?"
"But the Centaurs were half horses--not half Bishops, Reggie."
"I know: but the principle is the same."
"And not big sleeves, you are sure?"
"Quite. Deans do not burn the candles at both ends, so to speak, as
Bishops do: they are content to take care of the legs, and leave the
arms to take care of themselves."
Annabel smiled the tolerant smile of elder-sisterhood. "How funny you
are, Reggie! It is nice to hear you making jokes again."
And she went out of the room happy in the conviction that I was what
she would have called, "getting over it."
Arthur came over to the Manor in the afternoon, and confirmed what
Annabel had said. He had indeed been offered the Deanery of
Lowchester: but had not yet decided, as Annabel had, that he should
accept it. I was amazed at his hesitancy, considering what a splendid
offer it was for a man still comparatively young, and also--as Annabel
had pointed out--what a grand scope it would give him for his hitherto
wasted powers of organisation: but slowly the reason for this hesitancy
dawned upon me.
"To put it in plain English, old man," I said, after we had discussed
the question in all its bearings, and light was beginning to penetrate
the mists of my confusion, "the only reason you really have against
accepting this offer is _me_."
Arthur blushed: a rare indulgence with him. "Well, I don't know that I
should put it as bluntly as that, Reggie----" he began in his
deliberate way.
I interrupted him. "But _I_ should. It is always best to put things
in the bluntest way possible, and to look at them as they really are.
I learnt that from Fay. She taught me to have a horror of everything
that she designated by the inclusive term 'flapdoodle.'"
I made a point of bringing my wife's name into a conversation now and
again: it seemed somehow to narrow the gulf between us. Nobody, except
Ponty, ever voluntarily mentioned Fay's name to me (and perhaps that
was the reason why I still found a certain amount of comfort in Ponty's
society, and why I allowed my old nurse to take such egregious
liberties with me): so that unless I spoke sometimes of my lost
darling, she would have been altogether put away out of remembrance.
In the same way I have always hated the custom which obtains amongst
many people, of never speaking at all of those who have "crossed the
flood," or else of speaking of them in an entirely unnatural tone of
voice, and making use of such prefixes as "dear" or "poor." Such a
custom, to my mind, gives the indirect lie to all Christian teaching as
to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, and
is only fit for those who sorrow without hope. I maintain that those
whom we falsely call our dead should be spoken of as naturally and as
frequently as those whom we--making a distinction without a
difference--choose to call our living. It always irritates me when
Annabel says "dear Papa" and "poor Mamma": she would never have dreamed
of using either adjective in the days when our parents were still with
us at Restham: and to do it now creates a sort of artificial atmosphere
about them, which I, for one, resent.
"I dare say it is awfully vain and presumptuous on my part," Arthur
continued, "to think that my coming or going would make much difference
to you: but if I was any comfort to you at all, I should hate to take
it away from you just when you have had and are having such a rough
time."
I was touched by Arthur's unselfishness: and also remorseful at the
realisation of what little difference his or anybody else's coming or
going made to me now.
I put my hand on his arm, as we sat smoking by the library fire. "You
mustn't get that notion into your head, old man: it would make me ever
so much more miserable than I am at present if I felt I had in any way
hindered your career. It is always bad policy to throw good money
after bad; and I am bad money and you are good, as far as economic
currency is concerned. Don't think me ungrateful for all you have done
for me, because I am not."
"Rubbish!" growled Arthur. "I've done nothing for you at all."
"Yes, you have: you've been as true a friend to me as man ever had.
You've done a lot for me during the beastly time I've gone through."
"Then let me stay on here, and go on doing a lot for you. I ask for
nothing better."
Then I felt it was time to be brutal and to speak the unvarnished
truth. "You've done all you can for me, old man: I hate to say it, but
it's the truth. If you stayed on here, you won't do me any more good,
and you'd have spoilt your career for nothing. You did help me at
first, I admit, and I shall be always grateful for it. But to be
perfectly candid with you--though I hate candour, mind you, and would
never employ such a painful weapon unless I felt it to be absolutely
necessary--neither you nor anybody else can help me now."
"Except Fay," suggested Arthur, hardly above a whisper, as if he were
referring to some one who had been buried for years.
I shook my head. "I doubt if even she could help me now. Even if she
came back--which she never will--things could never be the same between
us as they used to be. I haven't forgiven her--I cannot forgive
her--and I couldn't live with her and be at enmity with her at the same
time. Life would be unendurable in such circumstances."
Arthur smoked in silence for some minutes: then he said: "Is that why
you have never come to Holy Communion now?"
"Yes. I cannot say that I am in love and charity with my neighbours as
long as I haven't forgiven Fay and Frank. But I haven't; and I don't
feel as if I ever could; and I cannot take the Blessed Sacrament until
I do. That is another thing I owe to Frank," I added bitterly; "he has
cut me off from the means of grace as well as from the hope of glory.
For the more I think of it the more I am convinced that it was entirely
his doing that Fay left me."
Again Arthur smoked for some time in silence, and then he said: "I
think you are right, Reggie: you are beyond my help altogether, and if
I stayed on here I shouldn't do you any good."
"I am past all human help," I replied.
"Yes, I think you are," said Arthur in his slow way; "but human help
doesn't count for much after all. There's plenty of the Other Sort
left--more than you or anybody else can ever need."
"Not for me: I have forfeited my claim to it," I groaned in the anguish
of my heart, as I remembered how I had cried in vain by old Parkins's
sick bed for the Help That never came.
Arthur did not speak, but he smiled the smile that I used to see on my
mother's face when I was a little boy, and on Fay's in the days when I
was pretending that I didn't love her--a smile which said as plainly as
if it had been put into words: "You don't know what you are talking
about," but said it with a tenderness that it was beyond the power of
any words to express.
I think the ruler of the synagogue must have seen that same
Smile--intensified a thousandfold--when his servants met him and said:
"Thy daughter is dead: why trouble thou the Master any further": and
the Answer came: "Be not afraid: only believe."