THE BISHOP PROPOSES A TOAST
Edmund had gone to Brighton to meet his partner and inspect the
“desirable premises” for their proposed curiosity shop.
Captain Welfare was to return with him some time before dinner. I had
the day before me and I awaited their coming with a great curiosity
as to the personality of this stranger. I was uneasy too, for Edmund
was so much committed to him, and seemed to leave his destiny so much
in his hands. From all he had told me about him, Captain Welfare
did not seem to me the most desirable kind of person to have such a
responsibility. He was certainly an adventurer, and hitherto not even a
very successful one. And he was admittedly a man of low origin.
However, it was clear that Edmund was born a bohemian and would always
be one. There had always been some such in our family, and as I thought
of what I knew of their careers I could not deny that they seemed on
the whole to have been much more charming people and to have got much
more really out of life, than the sober average of the rest of us.
I was certain that Welfare would prove to be vulgar and could only hope
he had a sense of honour.
Although I had carefully refrained from any criticism, which I knew
would only irritate Edmund, I did in fact rather dislike the idea of
the shop, and though my ignorance of commercial matters was fairly
complete, it seemed to me unnecessary and unbusinesslike to have
brought the _Astarte_ all the way from the Eastern Mediterranean for
the purpose of establishing and stocking it. I could only suppose it
was a case of combining business with pleasure.
I determined to put aside all these worrying preoccupations and return
to some literary work that had been interrupted since Edmund’s return.
Again I was interrupted, and somewhat fluttered, by the receipt of a
telegram.
This was from the bishop to say he was coming over about lunch time and
would stay the night if convenient.
Whatever Captain Welfare proved to be I felt he would harmonise ill
with the bishop, and my first impulse was to reply with some honourable
fiction that would postpone the visit. But even as I cast about in my
mind for the suitable subterfuge to commit to the pre-paid form, I
bethought me of how seldom my dear bishop got a chance of taking refuge
with me for one quiet bachelor evening, of the disappointment it would
be to both of us to lose this one. Besides, I reflected, Parminter is a
man of the world, much more so than I am, and he has a catholic taste
in mankind. Captain Welfare will interest him, whatever he is, and he
has always wanted to meet Edmund. Anyhow there would be time enough to
explain everything to him.
I wrote “Delighted” on the telegraph form and gave it to Bates.
“It’s the Bishop,” I said to Bates.
“Yes, sir.”
“He will be here for lunch and will stop the night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Of course his Lordship will have his usual room. Put Captain Welfare
somewhere else.”
“Very well, sir.”
Having thus made my preparations as a thoughtful host, I found it
was impossible to settle down to my monograph on the “Greco-Turkish
Alliance of the Sixth Century.”
I went out and awaited the bishop amid the sedative influences of my
pigeons.
The Right Rev. John Parminter was not only my diocesan, but for some
years had been, and thank God still is, my dearest friend. He shared my
interest in the Byzantine Empire, and, as I think I have mentioned, it
was this which first brought us together.
As a bishop he had less spare money, and far less leisure than I
had, to devote to our common hobby. He professed to envy me as an
“authority.” As a matter of fact I am but a painstaking student.
What my few books possess of merit in the way of generalisation, of
inference or speculation, they owe entirely to Parminter’s inspiration.
He is one of those men born to distinction, who show the fact from
schoolboy days. At this time he was in his early fifties, some eight
years older than myself, but quite among our younger bishops. He was a
young man, and indeed still is, in mind and heart, and even in physique.
But he was already a power and influence in both Church and State, and
had managed to avoid the hatred and mistrust of all parties in the
Church although he wore the label of none of them.
I believe I alone knew the extent of his heterodoxy. It was indeed my
greatest honour to have been chosen as his confidant.
Whenever it was possible, he loved to come to my vicarage for what
he called “a night’s holiday,” and the one mystery of my household
was that the bishop kept here, and always wore, an ordinary layman’s
dinner-jacket and _trousers_!
“This is dreadfully short notice,” he said as I met him at the
hall-door, “but I know you would have told me if my coming was a
nuisance.”
“I would. If you could ever be a nuisance, I’m the man to say it. Come
along in.”
He could not abide any ceremony in my house, and insisted on my calling
him “Parminter” when we were alone. Before Bates I addressed him as
“bishop” and if anyone else were present I put in all the necessary “My
Lords.”
“We shall not be alone to-night,” I told him as we lit cigarettes in
the study.
“Oh. I’m sorry, if it’s not rude to say so. Who have you got with you?”
“Edmund.”
“Oh, good! I’ve always missed the wicked brother, and I long to meet
him. I do hope he is not reformed or anything disastrous?”
“I hardly know yet. He’s quite prosperous this time.”
“Ah? Well, perhaps it’s ill-gotten gains and quite interesting. I want
to hear his adventures from himself.”
“So no doubt you will. But I must warn you there is a stranger as well.”
The bishop’s face fell. “So I suppose I won’t be able to wear my
‘tea-gown,’” he said.
I tried to explain Captain Welfare, as well as one can explain a man
one has never seen.
“I think we may be a most interesting party,” said the bishop. “I wish
Captain Welfare would turn out to be a pirate in disguise. It would be
so refreshing and stimulating. I should love to meet a pirate with a
Nonconformist conscience.”
During lunch our talk wandered away to the early Byzantine Empire, and
I explained my difficulties about that old first Greco-Turkish alliance.
I could see that Parminter was less interested than usual.
“It shows how deep the Balkan question has its roots,” he said.
We went for a favourite walk of ours across the Downs.
We crossed ridge after ridge, rounded and smoothed by forgotten oceans,
with delicate shades of green and mauve blending under the March sun
like the colours on the wing of a moth.
Before us as we walked was the dark distant line that marked the
beginning of the Weald, and, turning, we looked back across the grey
and silver of the Channel. Far away on our right the sun struck a gleam
of white from the cliffs of Beachy Head. An old shepherd and his dog
slouched after a slowly moving flock of sheep on their browsing way to
Lewes. On the sky-line a string of race-horses walked to their stables
after a gallop.
The bishop drew long deep draughts of the keen air, and I could see
some of the care fade out of his eyes.
“This is England to me,” he said. “So I hope to remember it when my
time comes not to see it any more. I hope I shall have earned the
right to forget the paved streets under the soot blanket, and those
awful rows of red-brick ‘property’--not homes, mind you, but someone’s
property, some vulgar greedy person’s ‘property,’ where children die,
and women slave, and their husbands avoid. You have not lived among
them as I have, and you don’t have to attend ‘Housing Conferences.’
The cant I have had to listen to during the last few days, from sleek
unimaginative chairmen of amateur committees of busybodies, and
aldermen from the provinces with weird voices and ghastly accents. All
these people with a lust for spouting platitudes and a determination
not to look things in the face, with their total failure to get
anything done.”
“It must be very unpleasant--meeting that sort of people.”
“It is. But one must do it. They stand between all right principles
and the unconsciously suffering people, who actually vote for them!
They represent the Kakistocracy which we have made of our pretended
Democracy.”
I looked at the bishop.
His lean, humorous face was grave and earnest, his eyes shone with
enthusiasm. I saw that he was quite serious.
We walked for some distance homewards in silence.
I have given but an outline of what the bishop said, but it depressed
me to know of all these things going on in the great world outside my
quiet home, my somewhat paltry life. It made me feel my own littleness
and inadequacy. I frankly admitted to myself that I had no moral right
to my wealth, that I had shirked the responsibilities it brought with
it. But if I had undertaken them I knew that I should only have done
harm through my ignorance. I had to content myself with being merely
harmless; spending and giving my money decently and judiciously. The
bishop had good reason to know that I was always ready to support with
money any of his schemes that required it. As a rule I had none of
Hamlet’s uncomfortable sensation that I was born to reduce dislocations
of the Time.
The bishop was quite distressed at a lame attempt of mine to express
something of this.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “we all have our Fate and our Function. It
need not trouble your conscience that yours is somewhat pleasanter than
the average. In these days the combination of scholar and gentleman
has ceased to man the professions. When we do find one, I think he
should be endowed by the State if necessary. When chance endows him,
as in your case, we should thank God for it. But I ought not to have
burdened you with all these harassing things that afflict us public
men. You can’t imagine the relief it is to me to have someone to whom
I can blurt out all that is in my mind without fear of his being
‘scandalised.’”
Our intimacy rendered any polite disclaimer from me unnecessary.
We began to talk about Edmund, and I explained in further detail the
projects of the partners.
“How old did you say your brother was?”
“He’s about twenty-five now.”
“Twenty-five. Well, some men are a long time growing up. Within limits
it’s the best men that take the longest. I am sure from all you have
told me that there’s a fine man somewhere inside your brother. But I
hope he’ll soon get tired of play.”
“I suppose it is just play,” I assented.
“It’s nothing else,” said the bishop. “And we can’t afford to have
well-bred men shirking their job.”
“Sometimes I fear Edmund will never be very different. He’s a
bohemian--a marine bohemian, if such a thing is possible. But there
have always been people like him in our family.”
“Want of opportunity,” the bishop replied with emphasis. “Such men are
simply victims of our social system. There is always a job for them,
the biggest kind of job. When they find it or make it, they become our
greatest men. Very often they miss it through the hide-bound stupidity
of our organisation. However, his chance will come, it is sure to
come, if he keeps himself fit and ready for it. But I don’t like this
commercialism.”
“He won’t take my money, so he has to make it pay.”
“Yes, of course. I hope he’ll get rich at once and be done with it--or
else fail altogether.”
“You don’t like the idea of the shop?”
“Oh, that’s only a detail. The whole thing appears to be petty trade.”
“He seems to leave that almost all to his partner.”
“Well, I don’t think he should. We don’t know this Captain Welfare.
But anyhow, in spite of all the modern tendency, shop-keeping is not
for gentlemen. It’s bad for them. The worst fate that can befall a
gentleman is to become ‘déclassé’.”
“I don’t see what else we can do with him at present,” I protested.
“If he’s the kind of man I imagine, they’d take him up at the Colonial
Office. I would introduce him to Brocklehurst myself, and he could
start as deputy commissioner or something in a place where he would get
all the adventure he’d want.”
“I should like that, of course. But I can’t answer for Edmund. He’s
like a man in love--with the _Astarte_.”
“Oh, we’ll give him time to get over that. There’s no hurry at his
age.”
We reached home to find that Edmund and his partner had arrived before
us.
We saw them walking on the lawn and went on to meet them. They were
deep in conversation and did not hear us approaching on the soft turf,
so that we were close to them when they turned and faced us. Edmund was
speaking and I caught the words “dry and level from the cellar to the
beach.”
I remember a feeling of amusement that he should so soon be inflicting
his obsession with the underground passage on Captain Welfare, whom I
did not associate with antiquarian research. But this was swallowed up
in my curiosity as to the personality of that mariner.
Edmund stopped short, naturally surprised at the unexpected presence of
the bishop.
My first impression of Welfare was his look of astonishment, almost
of fear, at finding himself in so august a presence. For an instant
he looked like a man who thought himself trapped. Edmund hastily
introduced him to me and he said “Pleased to meet you.”
I presented them both to the bishop.
Captain Welfare said “Pleased to meet your Lordship,” and kept his
bowler hat in his hand as we all strolled back to the house.
It was that terribly uncomfortable hour after six when tea is out of
the question, and one does not know what to do with a stranger before
dinner.
“Have you had tea?” I asked Edmund.
“No thanks. We only got here ten minutes ago. Bates offered us some,
but we didn’t want it. I was just showing Welfare the view before it
got dark.”
“Very charming prospect, sir,” said Welfare. “Very eligible place
altogether I call it.”
“Come in to the study. There’s time for a cigarette before we dress.”
The moment I said it, it occurred to me that perhaps Captain Welfare
did not dress for dinner. I looked apprehensively to Edmund, who
understood and nodded reassuringly.
I handed round cigarettes.
“Would you like anything else, Captain Welfare? After your journey?
Edmund, I’m sure you want a whisky-and-soda.”
“Yes, I think I do,” said Edmund ringing the bell.
“No whisky for me, thank you,” said Welfare. “Perhaps if you have a
sherry and bitters?”
“That’s an excellent idea,” said the bishop. “You haven’t asked me,
Davoren, but I think I’ll join Captain Welfare in a glass of sherry.”
I had always admired Parminter’s tact, and now Captain Welfare was
manifestly gratified with the sense of having done the right thing
under difficult circumstances.
Captain Welfare was kind enough to praise my sherry.
“I hadn’t ought to have put any bitters in it,” he said. “It puts me in
mind of the Green Man at Southampton, a little place near the docks.
Naturally you wouldn’t know it. But they give you a glass of sherry
there----”
He went on with this topic in a kind of meditative way, as if he had
forgotten to stop talking.
As there was evidently no necessity to attend to his story, I took the
opportunity of examining him more closely.
His short powerful figure was curiously like what I had expected. But
his face was quite a surprise to me. Most strange faces are somehow
familiar. I suppose they fall into one or other of certain categories
of faces we have unconsciously formed in our minds.
This face was extraordinarily large, forming, as it were, the front
wall of a massive head which was scarcely raised above his wide
shoulders by a thick and very strong neck. I had noticed that while he
was standing up. Now as he lay back in his chair the edge of his low
collar made a groove in the flesh under his jaw, and his large indented
chin almost filled up the opening of his waistcoat.
His complexion was quite colourless. I thought at first it was scarred
by small-pox, but the reticulations in his tough skin were finer than
those left by that disease. I don’t know if I am right about this, but
it looked as if no hair grew on this sterile surface. I doubt if any
razor could have shaved it. His vertical forehead, short straight nose,
wide but well closed mouth and powerful chin were all rather admirable
in a slightly grotesque way. He had undoubtedly the look of a man of
considerable force and determination. But his large, well-shaped,
greenish-brown eyes had a curious dreaminess in them, and something of
the wistfulness of those of a small monkey.
I thought as he sat there how impossible it would be from his
appearance to determine either his age or his occupation. I could
conceive of him as an ecclesiastic, a lawyer, a tailor, or an actor.
But nothing about him suggested the mariner. It is a curious fact that
in whatever line of life my fancy placed him, I pictured him at the
head of it as a cardinal, a Lord Chancellor, or a Scotch comedian.
Yet he had been apparently an indifferent success as an adventurer. I
thought of the bishop’s dictum--“Want of opportunity,” and wondered if
the _Astarte_ was destined to give this man his belated chance?
He was at all events physically hard and well-conditioned, evidently a
man accustomed to self-control. As his appearance became gradually more
familiar I found something strangely likeable in it.
His conversation so far was evidently a thing of habit, a mechanical
process like most people’s reading, quite unrelated to any cerebral
process behind it. I began to wish that he would stop doing it and let
us talk.
Through the vision he had unwittingly called up in my mind of a frowsy
bar-parlour with seafaring men on horse-hair seats expectorating and
drinking sherry, I heard the bishop apologising to Edmund for his
presence.
“I did give your brother a chance of putting me off,” he explained;
“but he was too kind to do it. We don’t often meet, and he knows how I
value these little escapes into his delightful bachelordom. Besides, he
knew how much I wanted to make your acquaintance.”
“It’s very kind of you to come in spite of us, my Lord,” said Edmund.
“I’m afraid we’ll be rather in the way of your Byzantine conversation.”
“From what your brother has told me, I should say you and Captain
Welfare have more of the Byzantine spirit than either of us.”
“The worst of me is that I don’t even know what the Byzantine spirit
is!” Edmund warned him.
“And we can only guess,” said the bishop. “But they strove and fought,
and they did make an Empire out of the ruins of an older one--even if
they didn’t make a very good one.”
“I’m afraid,” said Edmund with a self-conscious smile, “Welfare and
I cannot pretend to be empire-builders. We’re only business men and
sailors.”
“Those are two of the essentials. But I don’t think it’s
empire-builders we want. It’s empire-repairers.”
Edmund waited when the bishop and Captain Welfare went to their rooms.
“Why on earth didn’t you put the bishop off?” he asked a little
irritably.
“I’ve just heard Parminter explaining to you. Really it’s just as he
said.”
“That’s all very well. But you can see for yourself. Welfare is a very
good partner for me to have. He’s all right on board ship. But one
doesn’t exactly want to brandish him in the faces of one’s friends.”
“I think I shall like him. And if he’ll only tell us about himself and
his life, I’m sure he’ll be interesting.”
“Are you going to charge the bishop something extra for seeing him fed?”
“My dear Edmund, when you know Parminter better, you’ll be as fond of
him as I am. You will understand that his interest in both of us is a
really brotherly feeling.”
“Well, I wish he’d get it fixed in his head that we’re traders,
fruit-merchants, out for a profit, and not go gassing about
empire-building and cant.”
I saw now what was causing Edmund’s irritability. It was the
consciousness, or at least the fear of becoming _déclassé_.
“It’s not cant with Parminter,” I said. “He’s tremendously keen on
meeting men out of the beaten track; men who live in an original way.
And yours is an original way. I think he’s got an idea that this old
country has got to be jerked out of its ruts by original men. Although
he’s a bishop he has sort of lost faith in respectability.”
“By jove, I didn’t know a bishop could have so much sense!”
“I’m afraid I haven’t expressed it quite right. But you’ll understand
what I mean when you have seen more of him.”
Edmund went upstairs mollified and quite cheerful, and I was able to
congratulate myself on having restored the situation. For I was a
little nervous about the success of my curiously assorted party.
The bishop came down in full episcopal evening splendour, silk
stockings, silver buckles, and purple coat.
“The admirable Bates evidently considered these things necessary,” he
said, looking down with a sigh. “He left me no alternative.”
“Bates has doubtless scented a nonconformist in Captain Welfare. He
would be jealous of the dignity of the church in such company.”
“For myself,” said the bishop, “I would have inclined to any little
concession that might soften the dissenter’s preconceived idea of the
arrogance of the episcopacy. But Bates’s instinct is probably right.”
“It always is,” I said, and then Welfare came in.
His evening raiment was quite correct and good and gave his heavy
face an air almost of distinction. His only marked peculiarity was
a brilliant red silk handkerchief folded inside his waistcoat, and
showing for about an inch above its opening. I thought it quite an
effective patch of colour.
The bishop told me afterwards that it was considered quite essential
among the numerous class who had recently adopted the evening dress of
civilisation as a ceremonial costume.
“In the north of England,” he said, “parliamentary candidates have
to display this red badge at mayoral receptions and such functions,
whatever their political colour may be. I have never heard of anyone
wearing a blue one.”
Bates’s instinct had not been at fault, and it was clear that Captain
Welfare was gratified by the bishop’s apparel. He seemed at first a
little oppressed by the ritual of dinner. Not that there was anything
unbecoming to a country vicar about my table.
But when I reflected how much the element of squalor must have
entered into his life, how little he must have seen of the routine
of a comfortable English home, I understood that my inherited plate
and glass, the damask which was Mrs. Rattray’s tender care, the
arrangement of flowers in which my gardener gratified his pride, the
shaded candles, and the quiet, sympathetic ministrations of Bates and
a parlour-maid, must all seem unfamiliar, even grandiose, to Captain
Welfare. He seemed subdued and impressed, watchful but happy.
Edmund had been telling us of the beauties and the discomforts of the
Eastern Mediterranean.
“I suppose,” said the bishop, “you will eventually be running quite a
fleet of boats as your business extends?”
Edmund looked across to Welfare as though doubtful how to reply.
“No, my Lord,” said Welfare. “It wouldn’t pay to extend. It’s too
personal a business. We’ve only had the _Astarte_ a little more than a
year, but she’s paid for herself, for a new suit of sails, and a new
copper bottom. Now it’s all profit and I don’t mind saying she’s making
us a big percentage. But another boat without us aboard wouldn’t do it.
It’s knowing the trade and knowing the natives and working your boat
yourself. And of course there’s side issues to the trade. This Brighton
business we’re starting is one. I guess we’ll make enough to retire on
out of the _Astarte_.”
“Do you think you’ll want to retire?” asked the bishop.
Captain Welfare looked at him with a puzzled expression in his wistful
eyes.
“Well,” he said, “what’s one in business for?”
“Surely not merely to get out of it? It’s a dangerous thing to retire,
Captain Welfare. I’ve seen a lot of men in the Services retired under
the sixty-three years rule. They’ve been active, useful, young-seeming
men, keenly looking forward to enjoying their pensions. But, when it’s
come, they’ve grown old and boring all at once, simply tumbled headlong
into old age, and very often they’ve died in a year or two. You won’t
want to retire, will you, Davoren?”
“Oh, I should simply knock about in some other part of the sea,” said
Edmund.
“I don’t know how it may look to gentlemen waiting for pensions,”
Captain Welfare remarked with deliberation. “They’re gentlemen all the
time. But it’s different in business. I don’t see how a man can help
wanting to make his bit and get out of it. I hope you gentlemen won’t
think the worse of me when I tell you my father was a man who got his
living in his shirt sleeves.”
The bishop and I made appreciative noises. Edmund emptied his glass and
threw a savage but quite ineffectual look at his partner.
“Yes. He had a dry-salter’s business in a small town in Lancashire. He
always said he looked forward to putting on his coat for the last time
and being a gentleman. He had his eye on a little house in Southport
with two bay windows. He never managed it, poor man. It was partly
my fault. I never took to the business and didn’t give him the help
he had a right to expect. I was considered bright at school too, and
the lessons were no trouble to me, but I couldn’t see any _use_ in
the things I learned, or in the dry-salting. So I got aboard a ship
at Liverpool, as boy. It upset the old man a good deal, but it didn’t
break his heart. It was kidney-trouble carried him off.”
“By the way, I’ve often wondered what a dry-salter is?” said the bishop.
“Well, I don’t rightly know. I’m not sure if anyone does nowadays. I
think it’s an old-fashioned sort of name. Father sold Epsom salts, and
sulphur and things, wholesale to the druggists, but he sold paint and
turps and varnish and paraffin and patent medicines. Oh, and soap and
candles and brushes. I think a dry-salter can sell pretty well anything
he has a mind to.”
“Well, of course these things must be distributed,” the bishop said.
“It’s useful necessary work. But I can understand a man not wanting to
go on doing it all his life. And yet we’re all of us better, and look
better, in our shirt sleeves.”
Captain Welfare looked sceptically at the bishop, as though he feared
he were being mocked. I had a horrible fear that he might attempt some
sarcasm about lawn sleeves. But if he thought of it his manners were
too good to permit him to utter it.
“What I mean is that there ought to be more in life, for all of us,
than merely ‘making a living,’ and waiting for death in more or less
discomfort.”
“There’s preparing for the next world, my Lord,” Welfare said solemnly.
The bishop looked suspicious at once.
“I didn’t mean anything of that sort,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t
understand.”
“Well, I suppose a man has a better chance of making his peace with his
Creator when he’s out of business and--and isn’t distracted like.”
“No, I don’t see that. I cannot anyhow think of the Creator as
condescending to be at war with his creature, or conceive of Almighty
God deriving any gratification from the worship of people who have
nothing else to do.”
“Of course it’s not for me to argue with your Lordship. I was brought
up Chapel, and learned to stick to the Good Old Book.”
“Have a walnut, Welfare,” said Edmund pushing a dish across to him.
Of course I had known he was hating the conversation, but there had
been no chance to intervene. Parminter had an intense curiosity about
the religious ideas of laymen, and I knew that to him it would be
an irresistible temptation to dredge in the mind of so unfamiliar a
specimen as Captain Welfare. I too would have enjoyed it but that I
knew Edmund’s sensitiveness would revolt at the idea of his partner
being regarded as on exhibition. He wanted to be loyal to Welfare,
to have him, as it were, accepted, without having his peculiarities
emphasised.
On the whole I hoped Edmund’s intervention would be successful, and
seconded his effort by starting the port on its second journey round
the table.
Just then the hollow thud and ring of the hammer on soft iron and anvil
was distinctly heard from beneath the floor and diverted the thoughts
of us all.
Captain Welfare looked almost startled, and then glanced enquiringly at
Edmund.
“Somebody’s getting his horse shod out of hours,” said the bishop.
“The sound seems plainer than ever to-night. Have you heard it before,
Captain Welfare?”
“No, my Lord. Mr. Davoren was just telling me something about it when
you came up.”
“Edmund has been exploring and opening up the fabled passage, which
proves to be quite genuine.”
“Really? What did you find, Mr. Davoren?”
“Oh, the passage is all right. Bates and I only shifted some rubbish
in places and shored up the roof here and there. There’s a good sound
passage with a vaulted roof right down to the beach.”
“And you think it was really a smugglers’ passage?”
I explained my theory of its Saxon origin.
“It should be quite an important find. You must have old Smith and some
other experts down.”
“Some day,” I said, “but we’re keeping it to ourselves for a bit.”
“I see,” said the bishop. “Yes. Those antiquarians are a hungry horde,
Davoren.”
“They would probably dig up the whole of my lawn, and undermine the
foundations of the poor old house.”
“Quite true. I understand your feelings. I shall keep your secret.”
Captain Welfare had watched us thoughtfully during the discussion, and
I thought he seemed relieved at my decision.
“Your brother tells me you think of having a cruise in the _Astarte_,
sir?” he said abruptly.
“I should like it immensely, some day when I can get away.”
“Well, we’ve some business in Guernsey before we go back East. I
thought of making the trip as soon as we’ve fixed up the Brighton
business and put in our manager there. In about a fortnight, I hope.”
“You go, Davoren,” said the bishop, “you’ll be quite in time to see
the bulbs at their best. And I’ve just the man to take your duty. One
of my unfortunate out-of-work clergy depending on guineas for Sunday
duty. A few weeks here would do him no end of good, and he’s perfectly
civilised and harmless.”
“I reckon that about settles it,” said Captain Welfare.
“I only wish I could go too,” said the bishop.
Captain Welfare’s countenance exhibited a sudden astonishment, which
faded into the pain of a hospitable man compelled to withhold an
impossible invitation.
“That would be a great honour, my Lord. But I’m afraid--our
accommodation----”
“Oh! I’m sure that would be all and more than I desire or deserve. But
don’t worry. I could no more get away than fly.”
Welfare tried to hide his obvious relief in a long sip of his port.
“I don’t drink port as a rule,” said the bishop, “but you must allow me
one glass, Davoren, for a toast--Success to the _Astarte_.”
I was astounded at a look of horror in Captain Welfare’s face, as if he
had witnessed an act of sacrilege.
Edmund gave a cynical laugh as he raised his glass.
“The _Astarte_,” said I, as I emptied mine, and rose to return to the
study.