by Grant Allen
There were several cabs outside the House, but it was a fair, clear, star-lit night, and the Bishop on the whole, being chilly with horror, preferred walking. It would stretch his episcopal legs a little, after such a long spell of sitting, to walk from Whitehall down to Eaton Place. So he walked on along the silent streets till he came to the corner of St. Peter’s Church.
Then an awful thought suddenly flashed across his bewildered mind. Which house did he actually live in?
Yes, yes. It was too true. He had forgotten to notice or to ask the number!
If the Bishop had been a little more a man of the world, he would, no doubt, have walked off to the nearest hotel, or returned to the House and thrown himself upon the hospitality of the first met among his spiritual compeers. But he doubted whether it would be quite professional to knock up the night-porter of the Grosvenor at two in the morning, and demand a bed without luggage or introduction; while, as to his episcopal brethren, he would hardly like to ask them for shelter under such unpleasant and humiliating circumstances. The Bishop hesitated; and the bishop who hesitates is lost. Nothing but an unfaltering confidence in all his own opinions and actions can ever carry a bishop through the snares and pitfalls of modern life. He felt in his pocket for the unused latch-key. Yes, there it was, safe enough; but what door was it meant to open? The Bishop remembered nothing on earth about it. Mrs. Brandreth had met him at Paddington that morning with his own carriage, and he recollected distinctly that she had given John merely the usual laconic direction, “Home!” When he came out that afternoon, absorbed as he was by the proceedings of the Glamorganshire Dissenters, and distracted somewhat by side reflections about Iris’s love affairs, he hadn’t even had time to notice at which end of the street his own hired house happened to be situated. There was clearly only one way out of the difficulty: he must try all the doors, one after another, and see which one that particular latch-key was intended to open.
Walking up cautiously to the corner house, the Bishop tried to stick that unfortunate key boldly into the keyhole. It was too large. “Non possumus,” the Bishop murmured, with a placid smile — it is professional to smile under trying circumstances — and with his slow and stately tread descended the steps to try the next one.
The next one succeeded a trifle better, it is true, but not completely. The keyhole was quite big enough, to be sure, but the wards stubbornly refused to yield to the gentle and dexterous episcopal pressure. In vain did the Bishop deftly return to the charge (just as if it were a visitation); in vain did he coax and twist and turn and wheedle; those stiff-necked wards obstructed his passage as rudely and stoutly as though they had been uncompromising Glamorganshire Dissenters. Baffled, but not disheartened, the Bishop turned tentatively to the third door. Oh, joy! The key fits! it moves! it withdraws the bolt readily from the clencher! The Bishop pushed the door gently. Disappointment once more! The door was evidently locked and fastened. “This situation begins to grow ridiculous,” thought the Bishop. “One can almost enter faintly, by proxy, into the personal feelings of our misguided brother, the enterprising burglar!”
On the Bishop went, trying door after door down the whole south side of Eaton Place, till he had almost reached the very end. It was certainly absurd, and, what was more, it was painfully monotonous. It made a man feel like a thief in the night. The Bishop couldn’t help glancing furtively around him, and wondering what any of his diocesans would say if only they could see their right reverend superior in this humiliating and undignified position. His hand positively trembled as he tried the last door but five; and when it proved but one more failure to add to the long list of his misfortunes, he took a sidelong look to right and left, and seeing a light still burning feebly within the hall, he applied for a second his own keen episcopal eye with great reluctance to the big keyhole.
Next moment he felt a heavy hand clapped forcibly upon his right shoulder, and turning round he saw the burly figure of an elderly policeman, with inquisitive bull’s-eye turned full upon him in the most orthodox fashion.
“Now then, my man,” the policeman said, glancing with scant regard at his hat and gaiters, “you’ve got to come along with me, I take it. I’ve been watchin’ you all the way down the street, and I know what you’re up to. You’re loiterin’ about with intent to commit a felony, that’s just about the size of what you’re doin’.”
Dr. Brandreth drew himself up to his full height, and answered in his severest tone, “My good fellow, you are quite mistaken. I am the Bishop of Whitchester. I don’t remember the exact number of my own door, and I’ve been trying the latch-key, on my return from the House of Lords, to see which keyhole it happened to open.”
Tho policeman smiled a professional smile of waggish incredulity. “Bishop, indeed!” he echoed contemptuously. “House of Lords! Exact number! Gammon and spinach! Very well got up, indeed, ‘specially the leggin’s. But it won’t go down. It’s been tried on afore. Bishops is played out, my man, I tell you. I ‘spose, now, you’ve just been dinin’ with the Prince of Wales, and havin’ a little private conversation at Lambeth Palace with the Archbishop of Canterbury!” And the policeman winked the wink of a knowing one at his own pleasantries with immense satisfaction.
“Constable,” the Bishop said sternly, “this levity is out of place. If you do not believe me to be what my dress proclaims me, then you should at least take me into custody as a suspicious person without insulting my character and dignity. Go down with me to the Houses of Parliament in a cab, and I will soon prove to you that you are quite mistaken.”
The policeman put his finger rudely to the side of his nose. “Character and dignity,” he replied with unbecoming amusement— “character and dignity, indeed! Why, my good man, I know you well enough, don’t you trouble yourself. My mates and me, we’ve been lookin’ for you here this three months. Think I don’t remember you? Oh, but I do, though. Why, you’re the party as got into a private house in Pimlico last year, a-representing yourself to be a doctor, an’ cribbed a gold watch and a ‘ole lot of real silver from the unsuspectin’ family. Come along with me, Bishop, I’m a-goin’ to take your reverence right off down to the station.”
The poor Bishop temporized and expostulated, but all to no purpose. He even ventured, sorely against his conscience, to try the effect of a silver key in unlocking the hard heart of the mistaken constable; but that virtuous officer with much spirit indignantly repudiated any such insidious assaults upon his professional incorruptibility. The Bishop inwardly groaned and followed him. “How easily,” he thought to himself with a sigh, “even the most innocent and respectable of men may fall unawares under a disgraceful suspicion.” For it is only in a limited and technical sense that Bishops regard themselves as miserable sinners.
Even as the thought flashed across his mind, he saw standing under a neighbouring doorway a person who was evidently endeavouring to escape notice, and in whom his quick eye immediately detected the bodily presence of Captain Burbury.
The Bishop drew a sigh of relief. This was clearly quite providential. Under any other circumstance he would, perhaps, have been curious to know how Captain Burbury came to be lingering so close beside his own hired house at that unseemly hour. He would have suspected an audacious attempt to communicate with Iris, contrary to the presumed wishes and desires of her affectionate parents. But, just as things then stood, the Bishop was inclined to hail with delight the presence of anybody whatsoever who could personally identify him. He was in a lenient mood as to unproved suspicions. To his horror, however, Captain Burbury, casting a rapid glance sideways at his episcopal costume, silhouetted out strikingly against the light from the policeman’s bull’s-eye, turned his back upon the pair with evident disinclination then and there to meet him, and began to walk rapidly away in the opposite direction.
There was no time to be lost. It was a moment for action. Captain Burbury must be made to recognize him. Half-breaking away from the burly policeman, who still, however, kept his solid hand firmly gr
ipped around the episcopal forearm, the Bishop positively ran at the top of his speed towards the somewhat slinking and retreating captain, closely followed by the angry constable, who dragged him back with all his force, at the same time springing his rattle violently.
“Captain Burbury, Captain Burbury?” gasped the breathless Bishop, as he managed at last to come within earshot of the retiring figure. “Stop a minute, I beg of you. Please come here and explain to the constable.”
Captain Burbury turned slowly round and faced his two pursuers with obvious reluctance. For a second he seemed hardly to recognize the Bishop: then he bowed a little stiffly, and observed in a somewhat constrained voice, “The Bishop. How singular! Good evening. I suppose ... this officer ... is showing you the way home to your new quarters.”
The policeman’s sharp eye lost none of these small touches. “Doesn’t want to get lagged hisself,” he thought silently. “Didn’t half like the other follow letting me see he was a pal of his after I’d copped him!”
“Captain Burbury,” the Bishop said, panting, “I have most unfortunately forgotten the number of my new house. I was rather imprudently trying to open the doors all along the street with the latch-key which Mrs. Brandreth gave me on my leaving home for the House of Lords this morning, in order to see which lock it fitted, when this constable quite properly observed, and, I am sorry to say, misinterpreted my action. He believes I am loitering about to commit a felony. Have the goodness, please, to tell him who I am.”
“This is the Bishop of Whitchester,” Harry Burbury answered, very red, and with a growing sense of painful discomfort, expecting every moment that the Bishop would turn round upon him and ask him how he came to be there.
“Ho, ho, ho!” the constable thought to himself merrily. “Bishop and Captain! Captain and Bishop! That’s a good one, that is! They’re a gang, they are. Very well got up, too, the blooming pair of ’em. But they’re a couple of strong ‘uns, that’s what I call ’em. I won’t let on that I twig ’em for the present. Two able-bodied burglars at once on one’s hands is no joke, even for the youngest and activest members of the force. I’ll just wait till Q 94 answers my rattle. Meanwhile, as they says at the theayter, I will dissemble.”
And he dissembled for the moment with such admirable effect that the Bishop fairly thought the incident settled, and began to congratulate himself in his own mind on this truly providential nocturnal meeting with Captain Burbury.
“An’ what’s his Lordship’s exact number?” the constable asked, with a scarcely suppressed ironical emphasis on the title of honour.
“Two hundred and seventy,” Harry Burbury answered, trembling.
“Two hundred and seventy!” the guardian of the peace repeated slowly. “Two hundred and seventy! So that’s it, is it? Why, bless my soul, that’s the very door that the military gent was a-lurkin’ and a-skulkin’ on! Perhaps you’ve got a latch-key about you somewhere for that one too, eh, Captain?”
Before the Bishop could indignantly repel this last shameful insinuation, Q 94, summoned hastily by his neighbour’s rattle from the next beat, came running up in eager expectation.
“All right, Simson,” the Bishop’s original captor exclaimed joyfully, now throwing off the mask and ceasing to dissemble. “This is a good job, this lot. This here reverend gentleman’s the Bishop of Whitchester, an’ his Lordship’s been a-loiterin’ round in Eaton Place with intent to commit a felony. I ketched him at it a-tryin’ the latch-keys. This other military gent’s his friend the Captain, as can answer confidential for his perfect respectability. Ho, ho, ho! Security ain’t good enough. The Captain was a-skulkin’ and a-loungin’ round the aireys hisself, an’ didn’t want at first to recognize his Lordship. But the Bishop, he very properly insisted on it. It’s a gang this is; that’s what it is; the Bishop’s been wanted this three months to my certain knowledge as the medical gent what cribbed the silver. I’ll take along his Lordship, Simson; you just ketch a hold of the Captain, will you?”
Harry Burbury saw at once that remonstrance and explanation would be quite ineffectual. He gave himself up quietly to go to the station; and the Bishop, fretting and fuming with speechless indignation, followed behind as fast as his gaitered legs would carry him.
Arrived at the station, the Bishop, to his great surprise, found his protestations of innocence and references to character disregarded with a lordly indifference which quite astounded him. He was treated with more obvious disrespect, in fact, than the merest curate in a country parish. He turned to Harry Burbury for sympathy. But Harry only smiled a soured smile, and observed bitterly, “It is so easy to condemn anybody, you know, upon mere suspicion.”
The Bishop felt a twinge of conscience. It was somewhat increased when the inspector in charge quietly remarked, “I feel a moral certainty that my officers are right; but still, in consideration of the dress you wear — a very clever disguise, certainly — I’ll send one of them to make inquiries at the address you mention. Meanwhile, Thompson, lock ’em up separately in the general lock-up. We’re very full to-night, Bishop. I’m sorry we can’t accommodate you with a private cell. It’s irregular, I know, but we’re terribly overcrowded. You’ll have to go in along with a couple of other prisoners.”
Moral certainty! The Bishop started visibly at the phrase. It’s hard to condemn a man unheard upon a moral certainty!
There was no help for it, so the Bishop allowed himself to be quietly thrust into a large cell already occupied by two other amiable-looking prisoners. One of them, to judge by the fashion in which he wore his hair, had very lately completed his term of residence in one of her Majesty’s houses of detention; the other looked rather as though he were at present merely a candidate for the same distinction in the near future.
Both the men looked at the new-comer with deep interest; but as he withdrew at once into the far corner, and seated himself suspiciously upon the bed, without displaying any desire to engage in conversation, common politeness prevented them from remarking upon the singularity of his costume in such a position. So they went on with their own confabulation quite unconcernedly after a moment, taking no further notice in any way of their distinguished clerical companion.
“Then that’s not the business you’re lagged upon?” one of them said coolly to the other. “It isn’t the adjutant’s accounts, you think? It’s the other matter, is it?”
“Oh yes,” the second man answered quietly. “If it had been the adjutant’s accounts, you see, I’d have rounded, of course, on Billy the Growler. I never did like that fellow, the Growler, you know; an’ I don’t see why I should have my five years for it, when he’s had the best part of the swag, look ‘ee. I had no hand in it, confound it. It was all the Growler. I didn’t even get nothink out of it. That ain’t fair now, is it, I put it to you?”
“No, it ain’t,” the first man answered, the close-cropped one. “But there’ll be some sort of inquiry about it now, in course, for — worse luck for the Growler — I heard this evenin’ the court-martial’s acquitted that there Captain Somebody. They’ll look about soon for some one else, I take it, to put the blame upon.”
The other man laughed. “Not that,” he put in carelessly. “The court-martial’s acquitted him, but nobody don’t believe he didn’t take it. Nobody ain’t going to suspect the Growler. Every one says it’s a moral certainty that that Captain Thingummy there he took the money.”
The Bishop drew a long breath. After all, this whole incident had been truly providential. No names were mentioned, to be sure; but from the circumstances of the case the Bishop felt convinced the person referred to was Harry Burbury. Could he have been placed in this truly ludicrous position for a wise reason — on purpose to help in extricating an innocent person from an undeserved calumny? The Bishop, with all his little failings, was at bottom a right-minded and tender-hearted man. He would not have grudged even that awkward hour of disagreeable detention in a common lock-up if he could be of any service, through his unjust incarceration
, to one of his dear but wrongfully suspected brethren.
The men soon relapsed into silence, and threw themselves upon the bed and the bunk, which they assumed as by right, being the first comers. The Bishop, never speaking a word to either, but ruminating strangely in his own mind, took his own seat in silence on the solitary chair over in the corner.
The minutes wore away slowly, and the Bishop nodded now and then in a quiet doze, till the clock of the nearest church had struck four. Then, the door of the big cell was opened suddenly, and the inspector, with consternation and horror depicted legibly upon every fibre of his speaking countenance, entered the cell with a deferential bow.
“My Lord,” he cried in his politest tone to the delighted Bishop, “your carriage is waiting at the door, and your coachman and footman have come here to identify you — a formality which I am sure will hardly be needful. I must apologize most sincerely for the very unfortunate — —”
The Bishop held up his finger warningly. Both the other occupants of the cell were fast asleep. “Don’t wake them,” the Bishop whispered in an anxious tone. “I naturally don’t wish this story to get about.”
The inspector bowed again. Nothing could better have suited his wishes. His constables had made a foolish mistake, and the laugh would have been against them in the force itself, far more than against the right reverend gentleman. “Who arrested the Bishop?” would soon have become the joke of the day among the street Arabs. Besides, had he not, under stress of circumstances, been committing the irregularity of putting as many as three prisoners in a single cell?
