by H. F. Heard
“You don’t believe that stuff!” Then feeling that this Anglo-Saxon brevity was crude, “I mean—oh I don’t know!”
The fat face went into a third phase and by far the most surprising of the three it had registered. It actually became dignified. Miss Throcton stared. Some basically powerful emotion had risen and, as the tide floods the shore, all the petty confusions were gone. Further it was evident that the emotional tide was a double one, a blend of the two most powerful feelings, love and fear. Mrs. Simpkins was not going to break down or up. Under some extreme pressure the commonplace carbon of her normal temperament was becoming crystal.
“Can I be of any help?” Mrs. Simpkins’ call had been so clear though unspoken that her hostess felt no hesitation.
“Thank you, and forgive my being so upset. I don’t know why I came to you. I don’t know about healing but I do feel sometimes sure about guidance. I had to come here—as you see against my will. I don’t know if you can help, help … but you could, maybe, help me.”
Miss Throcton went over and put her hand on her guest’s shoulder. The other looked up and Miss Throcton was struck by the dignity of the face raised to hers. True, the eyes had tears in them and pouches under them. But the lifting up of the head removed all heaviness from cheek, jaw and chin. It was not beautiful but it was tragic. And the whole cast and turn of feature expressed a real strength—all the more convincing because quite unsuspected. The voice, too, agreed now with the expression, “I am sure my husband is gravely ill. That is what I came to say last time but hadn’t the courage. And now it’s worse. I haven’t any doubts about it. His father died—some mysterious condition of the blood—at his age. He won’t face it yet but I know he knows. I love him but I’m frightened, too. I know it’s wrong. I mean I’m frightened in the wrong way—about the wrong thing. We’re poor. He made his way. His father was a carpenter. I was, I was a small governess, I mean I went to poor families who could pay very little. We have no savings. My mother was ill a long time before she died.…”
Miss Throcton knelt beside her guest’s chair. Mrs. Simpkins now looked down at her own hands in her lap. They were finer, more descriptive and more worn than her face. She had taken off her gloves. The fingers had been well and strongly shaped and also well and heavily used. “If my husband fails now we have nowhere to go. I am sorry, but it frightens me. The Close has always despised us. My husband, if he is to recover, needs my faith, I know, and it’s going. I have no friends.”
Miss Throcton put her hand on the hands that lay folded before her.
“You are wondering why I came to you. Perhaps it’s harder to tell you than it would be to ask for, for help. Of course it’s an appeal for help but not for the kind of help people usually ask for. I came here because I was sure I had to. I didn’t want to. I knew you could help. But, you see, I wasn’t sure you would. No, listen to me now and then judge. I’ve said, my husband’s ill—more ill than he dare face. But also more ill—ill in a different way than he knows. He had, you may remember, a very nasty attack in the early winter. He was more ill than the doctor knew. The skin trouble was only a symptom. I know. I slept with him—at least he slept and I was kept awake by his talking in his sleep.”
The speaker’s voice, too, had become thin, monotonous as though reciting aloud a reverie rather than addressing a listener. But at this point Mrs. Simpkins roused herself, withdrew her hands from under the other’s and looking sideways at her asked, “Do you know what he said again and again. ‘He hates me: he will have his revenge. Skin for skin.’ Perhaps I’m wrong but I was frightened. For the words, though they sound silly, oh they were said with such fear. So I asked him, ‘What’s wrong?’ I thought at first he might be awake. But you know sleep-talkers answer if you speak to them. He rambled on, ‘He hates me. He won’t forgive me. He always despised me. I took what he claimed. And now he’ll be revenged.’”
She stopped. The two women looked at each other. Miss Throcton took again the hands that lay in the other’s lap. “You want my brother to stop disliking your husband.”
She looked steadily into the slightly bloodshot eyes, past their weary commonplaceness to their profound anxiety. “I will be frank. My brother was, was upset by the appointment. But please believe me, he has now quite overcome the feeling. I can give you my word for it. He has in fact told me that he considers your husband as the man for the Archdeaconry, and not himself.”
The other looked at her first with doubt, but doubt in which relief began to struggle with growing success. Miss Throcton was a person hard to mistrust for long.
“Then, after all, it may clear?”
“I am sure you may reassure him completely on that score.”
Mrs. Simpkins gave her hostess’ face a last searching look, then turned her hands to hold the one that rested on them and rose.
“I am deeply grateful.”
For the first time the voice was unsteady. Miss Throcton took the two hands in hers. They went to the door together.
Returning to her seat after the maid had let her visitor out into the street she sat doing nothing, until round the door her domestic’s face appeared at what physiognomists call the angle of enquiry, “Oh yes, Mary, you may take the tea things. The Canon is detained by a caller.”
Then her mind went back to consider her own caller. Well, she had wished, yes, she had asked—and to be frank she had asked out of wounded self-love at her own failure in what she prided, her courtesy—she has asked that she might have an opportunity to remedy this faux pas. And her wish, her rather perfunctory prayer, had been answered? She smiled, recalling the Scotch story of the minister who prayed for rain and, a cloud-burst following, was heard adding, “But moderately, dear Lord, moderately.” She could not deny that it was an opportunity. But she doubted whether she would have asked for one so considerable. What an odd and really rather unpleasant incident had emerged. How her brother would laugh with more force than pleasantness at what to him would be an utterly farcical story. She was glad that he would never know this new evidence of the uneducated vulgarity, the uncultured weakness toward superstition that still vitiated minds such as the Simpkinses’. But the poor woman was in real enough distress and had needed reassurance. She was glad she had been available: particularly glad, yes thankful, that she had been able to reassure the poor thing—in fact had been able to quote her brother. It proved beyond a doubt, even to the frightened woman, that the morbid fear of, obviously, a highly nervous man—with some constitutional weakness—had been quite groundless. She had heard that such reassurances, when they can be given with complete sincerity, often prove the decisive factor in dispelling quite grave states of mind. She was resigned that now she must show something more than conventional courtesy to Mrs. Simpkins.
“Poor things,” she thought, “with all their nervous reactions and anxieties: so uncertain of themselves and their future! One isn’t grateful enough for the security that birth, health, education and position give. One takes too many good things for granted. Well, I can show some gratitude by being kinder to them. I did fear at one time that Charles might show his disappointment by brusquerie of some sort. But, thank heaven, that’s all past now. And it’s an odd little finish that I should be let put the matter right and close it. We women are thought to be touchy, taking to the vapours and hysteria when offered marriage or any distinct attention and to our beds and consumption when we’re not. But men seem just as emotional.”
The Bishop would not have disagreed with her had she stood beside him as he watched the drooping figure of the Archdeacon pass across the Palace garden and go out of its gate. He, too, suspected with the Doctor that there might be quite as much emotion, as infection, in the Archdeacon’s debility. Well, all the more reason for putting his plan into action. Practical sympathy, doing for the ailing something that showed your consideration, could often do more for them than most of the pharmacopoeia. What he had planned was no doubt difficult but would serve very neatly if it could be effected. He
certainly wasn’t a timid man and he knew that once you had made up your mind about a plan, the sooner it is put into effect the better. He would make the whole approach as gracious as possible—an appeal for cooperative assistance, not an instruction. He wouldn’t, therefore, send for his colleague in this negotiation. He would himself call.
Ten minutes after his decision he was in Canon Throcton’s study. The organist was still with him as the Bishop was shown in. The Canon was pleased. He could rid himself of his too dutiful captive: the captive would see the Bishop coming to consult him; the Bishop would see the de facto Dean indefatigably in action, unwearyingly attentive to Cathedral detail.
He waved the musician out of the door and led the master of the Precincts to a chair. The Bishop also saw, in the little scene, an opportune opening.
“Ah, Canon, I see I’ve come on one more item of fresh evidence of your gift and care for administration. Everything in the Cathedral is now overseen, and everyone feels they have a real rector to keep them in line.” The Canon smiled. “Do you know,” the Bishop sat back in his chair and gave his voice that tone with which we convey that we may have been wrong and our listener the better judge, “Do you know, I think I must have been mistaken. After all, organization may be your forte. Several of my colleagues on the Bench seemed to be headed for high scholarship. Then the call, ‘Friend, go up higher,’ came … and I can say that few men who have the gift, the vocation, for administration, would exchange it for mere scholarship. The scholar is a looker-on and at an irrevocable past. The man who manages makes the present.”
Canon Throcton’s easy mood felt a slight chill of incomprehension. Could there be some new device, one of those modern things, to make him a Suffragan Bishop? He who did not want to be a Diocesan, why just for the sake of lawn sleeves, to have to rush about as a kind of kite’s tail to Bendwell’s energetic peregrinations!
“I am well content to ‘let my due feet never fail to tread the studious cloister’s pale.’”
“But if natural aptitude and native generosity both should indicate a wider field, I am sure you would accept.”
Then, seeing that the Canon’s first agreeability was now obviously becoming overclouded with a startled puzzlement, Bishop Bendwell judged the time had come to be definite, concise. “I am sure you are not unaware of the general state of the Archdeacon’s health—puzzling, mysterious indeed, and possibly grave.” The Canon did know it. “I am sure you sympathize with such a state.”
The Canon did not, and, as his assent had been slight to the first proposition it was slighter to the second. Besides, what he had now heard showed him that he had grounds for further irritation. Could he trust no one? He had taken for granted that his unbending to Dr. Wilkes had bound that source of information never to be so disloyal as to give news to others before the latest bulletin was first offered to the first dignitary who had ever treated him with any sign of intimacy. He felt the resentment which a civil servant feels when some wretched member of the police dares to write, over his head, to the chief of the department.
The climate of friendliness now fell rapidly until it sank almost to freezing. The Bishop felt that he had tried to the point of weakness to make his subordinate offer cheerfully what he must accept once it was issued as a command. His authority was being challenged. Evidently this arrogant scholar had once more decided as to what he felt he had a right to be given. The needs of the diocese, let alone those of a sick colleague, weighed with him not at all. Sympathy and self-respect both urged him to act now as the disciplinarian. Yet he was a good-tempered man and competently sure of himself and his dignity. He had never blustered or scolded in his life. But he had often spoken with unsmiling and effective decision. He would put the matter quite plainly.
“You see, I am sure, the situation. And I surely may still feel that I can and must rely on your loyalty to co-operate. Your care with the Cathedral has shown that you have the gift of administration. You have put it in order.…”
“That a fresh invalid may let it relapse?”
“It is a restricted field. What you have done will last. The Archdeaconry offers work I need to have done. The Deanery will offer quiet occupation.…”
“But not only is he now a semi-invalid, he is no scholar.”
“Please let us attend to you and your gifts. You are an administrator. I must think first for the diocese. Do for me there what you have done for the Close here. As it is a question of diocesan efficiency I have no doubt I will be able to see that the matter is made plain to the Prime Minister.”
It was the last gleam of persuasion before coercion. Though exasperated and feeling that he was trapped, the Canon had also throughout his life never openly let fall his outward caution. He must gain time. He saw that he could refuse and get nothing. The offer was a kind of sorry compensation for having been given the Deanery in all but word and then having it filched away. What a fool he had been not to have disguised better that he had desired the Archdeaconry and had resented it going to that other. Yes, he must think out this sudden and most unpleasing capsize of a plan that had seemed sailing straight into port. He bowed, to the still-seated Bishop, as he himself rose—a kind of ceremonious dismissal.
“I am—please, My Lord, be assured—deeply aware of your consideration for us your ailing flock. I am sure you will give me a little time to consider in silence, in prayer, this offer prompted by generosity, but, as you see, so unexpected that it has slightly left me at a loss.” Then, seeing that he could with safety go a little further in relief of his feelings, “My need for an hour or two’s reflection—if you will grant me as much—is due to the fact that I had come so completely round to the view you did express to me—that I was temperamentally unsuited for rural administrative work.”
The Bishop had risen too. “We used to say at college that any of the fellows could take any of the administrative posts if he really wished to do so.” He turned to the door saying with quiet authority that had in it more than a touch of moral force, “I believe in this case you will find this to be so and I know that you will be doing a kindness to everyone concerned.”
However, to be told that you could be kind, when normal selfishness has been inflamed to keen resentment, is to talk of the joys of exercise to a victim of the gout. It was too late for tea—and anyhow he did not want his sister’s company. Nor when he had seen his weighty guest to the door did he feel he could go back to his desk. The early evenings were drawing out and the air was mild. He would take a walk. He might relieve the mood of severe congestion caused by all the prospects of the future appearing equally unattractive. He was striding along, his mind turned inward on this problem. It was not, then, till he was accosted that he saw the Doctor standing in his path. Evidently Dr. Wilkes did not suspect that he had fallen from his place of almost-confidant to almost-suspect. But he had judged that the time had come when it could be wiser to speak to the Canon about the Archdeacon’s health, or lack of it—for anyhow the Archdeacon had reached that state of debility when self-pity makes the patient a constant publisher of his condition.
“I’m now uneasy about Archdeacon Simpkins—more, considerably more, than earlier. Indeed some step may have to be taken—in regard to his work and rest—if he is to be saved from a serious breakdown and, maybe, permanent invalidism, indeed from something, something even more final. A little while ago I felt that he was falling so rapidly into a despondency which makes the physician’s task almost impossible, that as I had had medical reasons for going to the Palace, I ventured to raise the problem of his health to the Bishop. I’m sure you, too, will realize that here we have a condition that can be tackled with most hope of success if we can spare the sufferer all exertion and worry, and yet not in any wise alarm him; as he might well be, if he thought of himself as being consigned definitely to the ‘sick-wing.’”
“The Deanery has now a well-matured reputation as an environment wherein suspended animation easily becomes a second and enduring nature.”
The remark was neither witty nor wise but it gave the Canon’s companion an insight he needed. And the Canon himself, feeling that he had gone too far in show of his resentment and reflecting that the Doctor had, after all, cleared himself to a great extent by making a clean breast of his Palace conference, relented into friendliness.
“You think it is vital that he have rest and yet just sufficient interest?”
“Well, let me be frank. Several times I have ventured to give you my medical confidence, and you have been good enough to help me with your advice. I am now inclined to think that here we have a further and grave step in what had been maturing for some time. I would not be at all surprised if the whole thing started with that strange small trouble when he was first appointed, you remember. These circulatory cases can show such symptoms. And he is of the age—just over forty—when one of the most pervasive of diseases—I mean one that can have the most widely diversified symptoms—does appear, pernicious anaemia. We know little of it and can do somewhat less. Common anaemia, for that we have a number of well-tried helps, and, maybe, cures. But with the pernicious form or forms—we can do little. But I have a feeling that there is a stage when say the common form or one of them, turns into a deadly type. But the whole matter is very mysterious. Pernicious anaemia, you probably know, pervades the whole system—it attacks the marrow of the bones, the digestion is out of order, the patient though may grow fat, the spinal cord very often becomes involved. The victim may die of exhaustion in a state of protracted unconsciousness, the mind seeming to fade away, or he may be ended by a rapid paralysis spreading up the body—it is certainly very confusing.”
He paused, lost in the no man’s land where the general state of that unknown necessity we call health meets specific attacks from a masked enemy. He was roused by the Canon’s voice, “Your prognosis, in this case?”
