And after that little tribute, which has been owing for more years than
it exhilarates me to count--and which has been paid with no expense to
anyone who followed my advice--let us overtake Conrad on the doorstep,
where he had just learnt that the vicar was at home.
The Rev. Athol Irquetson was a sombre-eyed priest with a beautiful
voice. In his zeal, he had studied how to use it--under an eminent
actor; in his discretion, he suppressed the fact--for he knew his
Sweetbay. He had also a fine faculty for gesture, which his
parishioners found "impressive"--and which they would have found
"theatrical" had they guessed that for years it had been cultivated
daily before a looking-glass. Why invalidate an instrument? To
admiring friends he said his gestures "came to him." They did, by this
time. He waved Conrad's apologies aside, and motioning towards a seat,
sank slowly into a study-chair himself. Conrad ardently appreciated
the pose of his hand there, as--a pensive profile supported by his
finger-tips--the vicar asked, in a voice to make converts: "And what
can I do for you?"
Yes, he remembered Dr. Page. Dr. Page was dead. But soon it was the
vicar's turn to be appreciative, for the intruder's glance kept
straying to the Canaletto prints that graced the walls, and it was a
rare thing for Mr. Irquetson to have a visitor to whom they spoke.
Those glances warmed his heart, and a digression melted his reserve.
"There are not many," he said; "but I think my small room is the richer
on that account."
"Surely," said Conrad. "If a picture is worth owning, it is worth a
spacious setting. A mere millionaire may buy a gallery, but it takes a
man of taste to hang a sketch. I have always thought that a picture
calls for two artists--one to create it, and the other to prepare his
wall for its reception."
"But how little the second art is understood. Of course the eye should
be enabled to rest on a picture reposefully. The custom of massing
pictures in conflicting multitudes is barbarous. It's like the
compression of flowers into bundles that hide half their loveliness.
The Western mind is slowly learning from the Japanese that a flower
ought to be displayed so that we may appreciate its form. I have hope
that when they have taught us how a flower should be put in water, they
may proceed to teach us how a picture should be hung."
Quite ten minutes passed in such amenities.
"Yes, Dr. Page died long ago," said the deep voice again; but the
subject was resumed in a manner almost intimate; "his wife was living
in--Malvern, I think. There was--it was common knowledge at the
time--some domestic unhappiness late in life; or perhaps it would be
more correct to say that it culminated late in life, for, like so many
mighty issues, I believe it originated in a seeming trifle. He was a
man acutely sensitive to noise, and his wife was decidedly a noisy
woman. I remember his remarking once that if she but touched a cup it
had a collision with all the china on the table, and that a newspaper
in her hands became an instrument of torture. No doubt he could have
controlled his irritability, but by all accounts his temper grew
unbearable. However, the news of his death must have been a blow to
the lady, for he died suddenly soon after they had separated. Death is
a wondrous peacemaker. The gravest offence looks smaller in our eyes
when it is too late to condone it."
"Yes," assented Conrad;
"'And I think, in the lives of most women and men,
There's a moment when all would go smooth and even,
If only the dead could find out when
To come back, and be forgiven.'"
"That is a beautiful thought," said the vicar, "or, speaking more
strictly, I should say it is an ordinary thought beautified. From one
of Owen Meredith's early poems, isn't it? But do you remember those
lines of Coventry Patmore's to the dead?
"'It is not true that Love will do no wrong.
Poor Child!
And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,
How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,
And of those words your full avengers make?
Poor Child, poor Child!
And now, unless it be
That sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,
O God, have Thou no mercy upon me!
Poor Child!'"
"Oh," exclaimed Conrad, "exquisite! I used to read Coventry Patmore
all day. Do you know 'Departure'?--'With _huddled_, unintelligible
phrase!' ... Ah! surely his hope was not vain--the Posterity he
respected will respect him. But--but," he bubbled, "I am so glad I
came! My dear sir, you enchant me; your recognition of Owen Meredith
alone would make the interview memorable."
"Ah!" returned Mr. Irquetson, with a whimsical smile, "there was once a
time when I read much poetry--and wrote much verse; and I have a good
memory. I remember"--his trained gaze took in the name, which he had
forgotten, on the card--"I remember, Mr. Warrener, when I used to pray
to be a poet."
"Do you think prayers are ever answered?" inquired Conrad. "In my life
I have sent up many prayers, and always with the attempt to persuade
myself that some former prayer had been fulfilled. But I knew--I knew
in my heart none ever had been. Things that I have wanted have come to
me, but--I say it with all reverence--at the wrong time, as the means
to buy unlimited toffee comes to a man when he has outgrown his taste
for sweets."
Mr. Irquetson's fine hand wandered across his brow.
"Once," he began conversationally, "I was passing with a friend through
Grosvenor Street. It was when in the spring the tenant's fancy lightly
turns to coats of paint, and we came to a ladder leaning against a
house that was being redecorated. In stepping to the outer side of the
ladder, my friend lifted his hat to it; you may know the superstition?
He was a 'Varsity man, a man of considerable attainments. I said, 'Is
it possible that you believe in that nonsense?' He said, 'N--no, I
don't exactly believe in it, but I never throw away a chance.'" On a
sudden his inflexion changed, his utterance was solemn, stirring,
devout: "'I think, sir, that most people _pray_ on my friend's
principle--they don't believe in it, but they never throw away a
chance.'"
He had said it before; the whole thing was too assured, too finished,
for an impromptu, but the effect of that modulation was superb. All
the artist in Conrad responded to it.
"And when they are sincere?" he questioned, after a pause; "for they
are sometimes. Your walls remind me how passionately I prayed to be a
painter. And your own prayers, I take it, came from the soul when you
craved to be a poet."
"But should I have been more useful as a poet? It wouldn't have
contented me to write--let us say--'The Better Land,' and more minds
are to be influenced by simple sermons than by great poetry. You
think, perhaps, that as a painter you would have been happier. But
perhaps you wouldn't. We are often like little children petitioning
their parents for the dangerous. I will not suggest that a merciful
God chastises us to demonstrate our error, but many an observant man
must have noticed the truth that what we have desired most strenuously
often proves an affliction to us, while the only sunshine in our lives
is shed by the thing which we prayed might never come to pass."
"Yes," said Conrad, thoughtfully, "I have seen more than one example of
that. But if we are mere blunderers beseeching in the dark--if we are
like children importuning their parents without discernment, as you
say--isn't the act of prayer futile? Isn't it even presumptuous?"
Mr. Irquetson raised his head, his eyes looked upward; "No--pray!" he
said, and the melody of his tone gave glory to a commonplace. "Pray,"
he repeated, and Conrad wanted to kneel to him then, there, on the
study floor. "One day perhaps you will afford me an opportunity to
make my thoughts on prayer quite clear to you. Pray--but with fervour,
and with sense. With humility! Sir, I cannot reconcile my faith in an
omniscient Creator with the idea that it is necessary to advise Him we
need rain in Rutland ... But I'm withholding the little information
that I am able to give you. I was about to say that Mrs. Page, so far
as I know, lives still in Malvern--or perhaps it was Matlock; and the
eldest girl----"
"Mary?" interposed Conrad.
"Quite so, 'Mary.' Mary married some time before her father's death,
and is settled in London, I think. My wife would know her whereabouts
better than I, she is friendly with a resident who has some fitful
correspondence with Mrs. Bailey."
"'Mrs. Bailey' is the eldest girl's married name?"
"Well, it used to be," replied the clergyman, with another of his
smiles. "But I was wrong--I should have said 'Mrs. Barchester-Bailey.'
She acquired the 'Barchester' after the ceremony; I cannot supply its
exegesis. The result of six months in the capital, I suppose, though
it is not everybody who can make such a great name in London in six
months."
"Much may be done in six months; his parents gave Keats to the world in
seven," said Conrad. "I am infinitely grateful to you for your
kindness." He rose. "If Mrs. Irquetson should mention Mrs.
Barchester-Bailey's address to you, and you would have the additional
goodness to let me know it----"
"I will drop you a line to-night--or to-morrow at the latest," declared
the vicar; and he pencilled the direction on the card.
"Good-bye," said Conrad. "I shall always be your debtor for more than
the address, sir."
"Good-bye," said the vicar, extending his hand; and 'good-bye' as he
pronounced it was a benediction.
Conrad had been so much impressed--so uplifted by the cleric's
manner--that, instead of swinging homeward in high feather at the end
of his difficulties, he proceeded slowly, in serious meditation. It
was not until the following afternoon when he learnt that Mrs.
Barchester-Bailey's residence was Beau Séjour, Hyperion Terrace, Upper
Tooting, that interest in his project was again keen. Then there was a
little throb in his pulses; a little tremor stole from the note; he had
annihilated the obstacles of five-and twenty years--it excited him to
realise that he stood so close to her who had been Mary Page.
The "Barchester," however, disturbed him somewhat. A woman who
reverenced apocryphal hyphens promised less companionship than he had
pictured ... Perhaps the snobbishness was her husband's. Tooting? He
had a dim recollection of driving through it once, on his way
somewhere. Was it to the Derby?
Well, he supposed the correct course would be to write to her and hint
at his return to town. He wondered whether the signature would waken
memories in her if she perpended it. Unless it did, the letter was
likely to prove a failure--he could not indite a very stimulating
epistle to a married woman of whom he knew nothing. Yet to call on her
without writing--? No, he must stand, or fall, by the signature. That
would say everything, if it said anything at all ... How stupid, in the
circumstances, "Dear Madam" sounded!
And what a stumbling-block it looked!
"Dear Madam"--he wrote--"Though I cannot hope you will be able to
recall my name, I think you may remember Mowbray Lodge. I have
regretted very much, during my visit, that Mrs. Page is not my
neighbour. It would have given me so much pleasure to call on her, and
to meet the family who were such very good comrades of mine in the year
when this house was a school, kept by Mr. Boultbee, and a posse of
children came down for the summer holidays. Perhaps the names of my
cousins, Nina and 'Gina, may be more familiar to you than my own. At
least those old-time friends of yours have shared my disappointment.
It is only since they left that I have had the good fortune to hear
your address mentioned. Will you pardon a stranger writing to express
this vehement interest on the part of people whom you have probably
forgotten? If I debated the matter for long, my courage would desert
me, and I should leave my cousins to make their own inquiries next
week, when I go back to town. On the other hand, if you and your
sisters remember us, pray believe that none sends kinder regards to you
all than--
"Yours truly,
"CONRAD WARRENER."
"Come, I don't think anybody can take exception to that," mused Conrad.
And he sent it to the post, with a line of thanks to Mr. Irquetson.
On the next evening but one he began to doubt if she meant to reply.
It seemed to him the sort of thing a woman would acknowledge
immediately if she didn't mean to ignore it altogether. Yet why should
she ignore it? Silence would be rather uncivil, wouldn't it--a
humiliation needlessly inflicted? If she had reasons for wishing to
decline his acquaintance, it was quite possible to prevent his
advancing, and to frame an urbane answer at the same time. Had he said
too much about Nina and 'Gina, appeared too much in the light of an
amanuensis? Surely she had the wit to understand?
Four or five days passed before he tore open an envelope stamped with
the initials "M.B.B." The enclosure began "Dear Sir," and his brows
contracted.
"Dear Sir"--he read--"I was very surprised to receive your letter.
What a long time ago, is it not? It is very nice of you all to
remember us after so long. I left Sweetbay at the time of my marriage,
and have been living in Tooting some years now. My mother has removed
to Matlock. If you or your cousins are ever in the neighbourhood I
shall hope to have a chat over old times. Please give them my
remembrances, With kind regards--Yours truly,
"MARY BARCHESTER-BAILEY."
There were only three wrong ways of beginning a response--three blatant
solecisms--and she had chosen one of them when she wrote "Dear Sir."
Conrad was disappointed. The "fair and slightly pathetic" figure of
his dreams grew fainter; his ideal confidante didn't make these
mistakes. He put the missive in his pocket, and drew dejectedly at his
pipe.
"Of course I shall go," ran his thoughts, "but I've made rather an ass
of myself, taking such trouble to find her!"