Mullins said afterward that it was ever so much easier than he thought
it would have been. The Dean, he said, was so quiet. Of course if Mr.
Drone had started to swear at Mullins, or tried to strike him, it would
have been much harder. But as it was he was so quiet that part of the
time he hardly seemed to follow what Mullins was saying. So Mullins
was glad of that, because it proved that the Dean wasn't feeling
disappointed as, in a way, he might have.
Indeed, the only time when the rector seemed animated and excited in the
whole interview was when Mullins said that the campaign had been ruined
by a lot of confounded mugwumps. Straight away the Dean asked if those
mugwumps had really prejudiced the outcome of the campaign. Mullins
said there was no doubt of it, and the Dean enquired if the presence
of mugwumps was fatal in matters of endeavour, and Mullins said that
it was. Then the rector asked if even one mugwump was, in the Christian
sense, deleterious. Mullins said that one mugwump would kill anything.
After that the Dean hardly spoke at all.
In fact, the rector presently said that he mustn't detain Mullins too
long and that he had detained him too long already and that Mullins must
be weary from his train journey and that in cases of extreme weariness
nothing but a sound sleep was of any avail; he himself, unfortunately,
would not be able to avail himself of the priceless boon of slumber
until he had first retired to his study to write some letters; so that
Mullins, who had a certain kind of social quickness of intuition, saw
that it was time to leave, and went away.
It was midnight as he went down the street, and a dark, still night.
That can be stated positively because it came out in court afterwards.
Mullins swore that it was a dark night; he admitted, under examination,
that there may have been the stars, or at least some of the less
important of them, though he had made no attempt, as brought out on
cross-examination, to count them: there may have been, too, the electric
lights, and Mullins was not willing to deny that it was quite possible
that there was more or less moonlight. But that there was no light that
night in the form of sunlight, Mullins was absolutely certain. All that,
I say, came out in court.
But meanwhile the rector had gone upstairs to his study and had seated
himself in front of his table to write his letters. It was here always
that he wrote his sermons. From the window of the room you looked
through the bare white maple trees to the sweeping outline of the church
shadowed against the night sky, and beyond that, though far off, was
the new cemetery where the rector walked of a Sunday (I think I told you
why): beyond that again, for the window faced the east, there lay, at no
very great distance, the New Jerusalem. There were no better things that
a man might look towards from his study window, nor anything that could
serve as a better aid to writing.
But this night the Dean's letters must have been difficult indeed to
write. For he sat beside the table holding his pen and with his head
bent upon his other hand, and though he sometimes put a line or two on
the paper, for the most part he sat motionless. The fact is that Dean
Drone was not trying to write letters, but only one letter. He was
writing a letter of resignation. If you have not done that for forty
years it is extremely difficult to get the words.
So at least the Dean found it. First he wrote one set of words and then
he sat and thought and wrote something else. But nothing seemed to suit.
The real truth was that Dean Drone, perhaps more than he knew himself,
had a fine taste for words and effects, and when you feel that a
situation is entirely out of the common, you naturally try, if you have
that instinct, to give it the right sort of expression.
I believe that at the time when Rupert Drone had taken the medal
in Greek over fifty years ago, it was only a twist of fate that had
prevented him from becoming a great writer. There was a buried author in
him just as there was a buried financier in Jefferson Thorpe. In fact,
there were many people in Mariposa like that, and for all I know you may
yourself have seen such elsewhere. For instance, I am certain that Billy
Rawson, the telegraph operator at Mariposa, could easily have invented
radium. In the same way one has only to read the advertisements of Mr.
Gingham, the undertaker, to know that there is still in him a poet,
who could have written on death far more attractive verses than the
Thanatopsis of Cullen Bryant, and under a title less likely to offend
the public and drive away custom. He has told me this himself.
So the Dean tried first this and then that and nothing would seem to
suit. First of all he wrote:
"It is now forty years since I came among you, a youth full of life and
hope and ardent in the work before me--" Then he paused, doubtful of the
accuracy and clearness of the expression, read it over again and again
in deep thought and then began again:
"It is now forty years since I came among you, a broken and melancholy
boy, without life or hope, desiring only to devote to the service of
this parish such few years as might remain of an existence blighted
before it had truly begun--" And then again the Dean stopped. He read
what he had written; he frowned; he crossed it through with his pen.
This was no way to write, this thin egotistical strain of complaint.
Once more he started:
"It is now forty years since I came among you, a man already tempered
and trained, except possibly in mathematics--" And then again the rector
paused and his mind drifted away to the memory of the Anglican professor
that I spoke of, who had had so little sense of his higher mission as to
omit the teaching of logarithms. And the rector mused so long that
when he began again it seemed to him that it was simpler and better to
discard the personal note altogether, and he wrote:
"There are times, gentlemen, in the life of a parish, when it comes to
an epoch which brings it to a moment when it reaches a point--"
The Dean stuck fast again, but refusing this time to be beaten went
resolutely on:
"--reaches a point where the circumstances of the moment make the epoch
such as to focus the life of the parish in that time."
Then the Dean saw that he was beaten, and he knew that he not only
couldn't manage the parish but couldn't say so in proper English, and of
the two the last was the bitterer discovery.
He raised his head, and looked for a moment through the window at the
shadow of the church against the night, so outlined that you could
almost fancy that the light of the New Jerusalem was beyond it. Then he
wrote, and this time not to the world at large but only to Mullins:
"My dear Harry, I want to resign my charge. Will you come over and help
me?"
When the Dean at last rose from writing that, I think it was far on in
the night. As he rose he looked again through the window, looked once
and then once more, and so stood with widening eyes, and his face set
towards what he saw.
What was that? That light in the sky there, eastward?--near or far he
could not say. Was it already the dawn of the New Jerusalem brightening
in the east, or was it--look--in the church itself,--what is that?--that
dull red glow that shines behind the stained-glass windows, turning them
to crimson? that fork of flame that breaks now from the casement and
flashes upward, along the wood--and see--that sudden sheet of fire that
springs the windows of the church with the roar of splintered glass and
surges upward into the sky, till the dark night and the bare trees and
sleeping street of Mariposa are all illumined with its glow!
Fire! Fire! and the sudden sound of the bell now, breaking upon the
night.
So stood the Dean erect, with one hand pressed against the table for
support, while the Mariposa fire bell struck out its warning to the
sleeping town,--stood there while the street grew loud with the tumult
of voices,--with the roaring gallop of the fire brigade,--with the harsh
note of the gong--and over all other sounds, the great seething of the
flames that tore their way into the beams and rafters of the pointed
church and flared above it like a torch into the midnight sky.
So stood the Dean, and as the church broke thus into a very beacon
kindled upon a hill,--sank forward without a sign, his face against the
table, stricken.
You need to see a fire in a place such as Mariposa, a town still half of
wood, to know what fire means. In the city it is all different. To
the onlooker, at any rate, a fire is only a spectacle, nothing more.
Everything is arranged, organized, certain. It is only once perhaps in a
century that fire comes to a large city as it comes to the little wooden
town like Mariposa as a great Terror of the Night.
That, at any rate, is what it meant in Mariposa that night in April, the
night the Church of England Church burnt down. Had the fire gained but
a hundred feet, or less, it could have reached from the driving shed
behind the church to the backs of the wooden shops of the Main Street,
and once there not all the waters of Lake Wissanotti could stay the
course of its destruction. It was for that hundred feet that they
fought, the men of Mariposa, from the midnight call of the bell till the
slow coming of the day. They fought the fire, not to save the church,
for that was doomed from the first outbreak of the flames, but to stop
the spread of it and save the town. They fought it at the windows,
and at the blazing doors, and through the yawning furnace of the open
belfry; fought it, with the Mariposa engine thumping and panting in the
street, itself aglow with fire like a servant demon fighting its own
kind, with tall ladders reaching to the very roof, and with hose that
poured their streams of tossing water foaming into the flames.
Most of all they fought to save the wooden driving shed behind the
church from which the fire could leap into the heart of Mariposa. That
was where the real fight was, for the life of the town. I wish you could
have seen how they turned the hose against the shingles, ripping and
tearing them from their places with the force of the driven water: how
they mounted on the roof, axe in hand, and cut madly at the rafters
to bring the building down, while the black clouds of smoke rolled in
volumes about the men as they worked. You could see the fire horses
harnessed with logging chains to the uprights of the shed to tear the
building from its place.
Most of all I wish you could have seen Mr. Smith, proprietor, as I think
you know, of Smith's Hotel, there on the roof with a fireman's helmet
on, cutting through the main beam of solid cedar, twelve by twelve, that
held tight still when the rafters and the roof tree were down already,
the shed on fire in a dozen places, and the other men driven from the
work by the flaming sparks, and by the strangle of the smoke. Not so
Mr. Smith! See him there as he plants himself firm at the angle of the
beams, and with the full impact of his two hundred and eighty pounds
drives his axe into the wood! I tell you it takes a man from the pine
country of the north to handle an axe! Right, left, left, right, down
it comes, with never a pause or stay, never missing by a fraction of
an inch the line of the stroke! At it, Smith! Down with it! Till with
a shout from the crowd the beam gapes asunder, and Mr. Smith is on the
ground again, roaring his directions to the men and horses as they haul
down the shed, in a voice that dominates the fire itself.
Who made Mr. Smith the head and chief of the Mariposa fire brigade that
night, I cannot say. I do not know even where he got the huge red helmet
that he wore, nor had I ever heard till the night the church burnt down
that Mr. Smith was a member of the fire brigade at all. But it's always
that way. Your little narrow-chested men may plan and organize, but when
there is something to be done, something real, then it's the man of size
and weight that steps to the front every time. Look at Bismarck and
Mr. Gladstone and President Taft and Mr. Smith,--the same thing in each
case.
I suppose it was perfectly natural that just as soon as Mr. Smith came
on the scene he put on somebody's helmet and shouted his directions
to the men and bossed the Mariposa fire brigade like Bismarck with the
German parliament.
The fire had broken out late, late at night, and they fought it till the
day. The flame of it lit up the town and the bare grey maple trees, and
you could see in the light of it the broad sheet of the frozen lake,
snow covered still. It kindled such a beacon as it burned that from the
other side of the lake the people on the night express from the north
could see it twenty miles away. It lit up such a testimony of flame that
Mariposa has never seen the like of it before or since. Then when the
roof crashed in and the tall steeple tottered and fell, so swift a
darkness seemed to come that the grey trees and the frozen lake vanished
in a moment as if blotted out of existence.
When the morning came the great church of Mariposa was nothing but a
ragged group of walls with a sodden heap of bricks and blackened wood,
still hissing here and there beneath the hose with the sullen anger of
a conquered fire. Round the ruins of the fire walked the people of
Mariposa next morning, and they pointed out where the wreck of the
steeple had fallen, and where the bells of the church lay in a molten
heap among the bricks, and they talked of the loss that it was and how
many dollars it would take to rebuild the church, and whether it was
insured and for how much. And there were at least fourteen people who
had seen the fire first, and more than that who had given the first
alarm, and ever so many who knew how fires of this sort could be
prevented.
Most noticeable of all you could see the sidesmen and the wardens and
Mullins, the chairman of the vestry, talking in little groups about the
fire. Later in the day there came from the city the insurance men and
the fire appraisers, and they too walked about the ruins, and talked
with the wardens and the vestry men. There was such a luxury of
excitement in the town that day that it was just as good as a public
holiday.
But the strangest part of it was the unexpected sequel. I don't know
through what error of the Dean's figures it happened, through what lack
of mathematical training the thing turned out as it did. No doubt the
memory of the mathematical professor was heavily to blame for it, but
the solid fact is that the Church of England Church of Mariposa turned
out to be insured for a hundred thousand, and there were the receipts
and the vouchers, all signed and regular, just as they found them in a
drawer of the rector's study. There was no doubt about it. The insurance
people might protest as they liked. The straight, plain fact was that
the church was insured for about twice the whole amount of the cost and
the debt and the rector's salary and the boarding-school fees of the
littlest of the Drones all put together.
There was a Whirlwind Campaign for you! Talk of raising money,--that was
something like! I wonder if the universities and the city institutions
that go round trying to raise money by the slow and painful method
called a Whirlwind Campaign, that takes perhaps all day to raise fifty
thousand dollars, ever thought of anything so beautifully simple as
this.
The Greater Testimony that had lain so heavily on the congregation went
flaming to its end, and burned up its debts and its obligations and
enriched its worshippers by its destruction. Talk of a beacon on a hill!
You can hardly beat that one.
I wish you could have seen how the wardens and the sidesmen and Mullins,
the chairman of the vestry, smiled and chuckled at the thought of it.
Hadn't they said all along that all that was needed was a little faith
and effort? And here it was, just as they said, and they'd been right
after all.
Protest from the insurance people? Legal proceedings to prevent payment?
My dear sir! I see you know nothing about the Mariposa court, in spite
of the fact that I have already said that it was one of the most
precise instruments of British fair play ever established. Why, Judge
Pepperleigh disposed of the case and dismissed the protest of the
company in less than fifteen minutes! Just what the jurisdiction
of Judge Pepperleigh's court is I don't know, but I do know that in
upholding the rights of a Christian congregation--I am quoting here the
text of the decision--against the intrigues of a set of infernal skunks
that make too much money, anyway, the Mariposa court is without an
equal. Pepperleigh even threatened the plaintiffs with the penitentiary,
or worse.
How the fire started no one ever knew. There was a queer story that went
about to the effect that Mr. Smith and Mr. Gingham's assistant had been
seen very late that night carrying an automobile can of kerosene up the
street. But that was amply disproved by the proceedings of the court,
and by the evidence of Mr. Smith himself. He took his dying oath,--not
his ordinary one as used in the License cases, but his dying one,--that
he had not carried a can of kerosene up the street, and that anyway it
was the rottenest kind of kerosene he had ever seen and no more use than
so much molasses. So that point was settled.
Dean Drone? Did he get well again? Why, what makes you ask that? You
mean, was his head at all affected after the stroke? No, it was not.
Absolutely not. It was not affected in the least, though how anybody who
knows him now in Mariposa could have the faintest idea that his mind was
in any way impaired by the stroke is more than I can tell. The engaging
of Mr. Uttermost, the curate, whom perhaps you have heard preach in the
new church, had nothing whatever to do with Dean Drone's head. It was
merely a case of the pressure of overwork. It was felt very generally
by the wardens that, in these days of specialization, the rector was
covering too wide a field, and that if he should abandon some of the
lesser duties of his office, he might devote his energies more intently
to the Infant Class. That was all. You may hear him there any afternoon,
talking to them, if you will stand under the maple trees and listen
through the open windows of the new Infant School.
And, as for audiences, for intelligence, for attention--well, if I want
to find listeners who can hear and understand about the great spaces
of Lake Huron, let me tell of it, every time face to face with the blue
eyes of the Infant Class, fresh from the infinity of spaces greater
still. Talk of grown-up people all you like, but for listeners let me
have the Infant Class with their pinafores and their Teddy Bears and
their feet not even touching the floor, and Mr. Uttermost may preach to
his heart's content of the newer forms of doubt revealed by the higher
criticism.
So you will understand that the Dean's mind is, if anything, even
keener, and his head even clearer than before. And if you want proof of
it, notice him there beneath the plum blossoms reading in the Greek:
he has told me that he finds that he can read, with the greatest ease,
works in the Greek that seemed difficult before. Because his head is so
clear now.
And sometimes,--when his head is very clear,--as he sits there reading
beneath the plum blossoms he can hear them singing beyond, and his
wife's voice.