The strange unnatural calm lasted several days. The Cathedral dignitaries moved about in fear and trembling. At length one night the dwellers in the Close were aroused by a peculiar hammering. It was frequent, deep, and ominous, and came from the direction of Mr. Swainson’s plot. To the nervous it seemed as the knocking of nails into an untimely coffin; to the guilty — and this was very near the Cathedral — like the noise of a rising scaffold; to the brave and those with clear consciences, such as Clive Buxton, it more nearly resembled the knocking a hoarding together. And indeed that was the very thing it was, and around Mr. Swainson’s plot.
But what a hoarding! When the light of day discovered it to people’s eyes, the Dean’s fearful anticipations seemed slight to him, as the boy’s vision who has dreamed he is about to be flogged in jail, and awakes to find his father standing over him with a strap. It was so unsightly, so gaunt, so unpainted, so terrible; the very stones of the Cathedral seemed to blush a deeper red at discovering it, and the oldest houses to turn a darker purple. Had the Dean possessed the hundred tongues of Fame (which in Bicester possessed many more) and the five hundred fingers of Briareus he could not hope to prevent the Marquis’s visitors asking questions about that, or to divert the attention of the least curious American. He recognized the truth at a glance, and formed his plan. Many generals have formed it before; it was — retreat. He sent out his butler to borrow a continental Bradshaw from the club, and shut himself up in his study. The truly great mind is never overwhelmed.
The vergers alone inspected the monster unmoved. They eyed it with glances not only of curiosity, but of appreciative intelligence. Not so, however, later in the day. Then Mr. Swainson appeared, leading by a strong chain a brindled bull-dog, of the most ferocious description and about sixty pounds weight. The animal contemplated the nearest verger with much satisfaction, and licked his chops: it might be at some grateful memory. The verger, who was in a small way a student of natural history, pronounced it however a lick of anticipation, and appeared not a little disconcerted. Mr. Swainson entered with the dog by a small door at the corner, and came out again without him. The other vergers then left.
Their coming and going was nothing to Mr. Swainson. It was enough for him that he stood there the cynosure of every eye in the Close; even Mrs. Dean was watching him from a distant garret window. In slow and measured fashion he walked to the steps of his own house, and, taking from them a board he had previously placed there, returned to the entrance of his plot, now enclosed to the height of about ten feet by this terrible hoarding. Above the door he carefully hung the board and drew back a few feet to take in the effect. Mrs. Dean sent down hastily for her opera-glasses, but really there was no need of them. The legend in huge black letters on a white ground ran thus: “No Admittance! Beware of the Dog!!!” A smile of content crept slowly over Mr. Swainson’s face, and he said aloud,
“Trump that card, Mr. Dean, if you can.”
As he turned — Mrs. Dean saw it distinctly and declared herself ready to swear to it in any court of justice — he snapped his fingers at the Deanery. And the dog howled!
It was the first of many howls, for he was a dog of great width of chest; and not even the surgeon of an insurance company, if he had lived twenty-four hours in Bicester Close, would have found fault with his lungs. Why he howled during the night, for it was not the time of full moon, became the burning question of each morning. That he joined in the Cathedral services with a zest and discrimination which rendered the organ almost superfluous, and drove the organist to the verge of resignation, was only to be expected. There was nothing strange in that, nor in his rivalry of the Præcentor’s best notes, whose voice was considered very fine in the Litany. The voluntary, Tiger made his own; and of the sermon he expressed disapproval in so marked a manner that it was hard to say which swelled more with rage, the Dean within or the dog without. Their rage was equally impotent.
Things went so far that the Dean publicly wrung his hands at the breakfast-table. “You could not hear the benediction this morning! And I was in good voice too, my dear!” he wailed, with tears in his eyes.
“You should appeal to the Marquis,” suggested his wife. It must be explained that the Marquis in Bicester ranks next to and little beneath Providence. But the Dean shook his head. He put no faith in the power even of the Marquis to handle Mr. Swainson. “I will lay it before the Bishop, my dear,” he said humbly. And then, indeed, Mrs. Dean knew that the iron had entered into his soul, and that the hand of the Mayor of the Palace was very heavy upon him; and her good, wifely heart grew so hot that she felt she could have no more patience with her daughter.
For Clive’s sympathies were no longer to be trusted. She was not the Sweet Clive of a month ago, but a sadder and more sedate young person, who had a troublesome and annoying way of defending the absent foe, and of sighing in dark corners, that was more than provoking. Duty demanded that she should be an ocean, into which her father and mother might pour the streams of their indignation and meet with a sympathizing floodtide, and lo! this unfeeling girl declined to make herself useful in that way, and instead sent forth a “bore” of light jesting that made little of the enemy’s enormities and a trifle of his outrages. More, she showed herself for the first time disobedient; she altogether refused to promise not to speak to King Pepin if opportunity should serve, and, clever girl as she was, laughed her father out of insisting upon it, and kissed her mother into being a not unwilling ally. A wise woman was her mother and clear-sighted; she saw that Clive had a spirit, but no longer a heart of her own. Yet at such a time as this, when her husband was wringing his hands, Clive’s insensibility to the family grievances tried Mrs. Dean sorely. It was hard that the Canon’s sleepless night, the Præcentor’s peevishness, the singing man’s influenza, and all the countless counts of the indictment against Mr. Swainson, should fail to awaken in the young lady’s mind a tithe of the indignation shared by every other person at the Deanery, from the Dean himself to the scullery maid. But then love is blind; for which most of us may thank Heaven.
Day after day went by and the hoarding still reared its gaunt height, and the unclean beast of the Hebrews still made night hideous, and the day a time for the expression of strong feelings. At length the Dean met his legal adviser in the Close — ay, and within a few feet of the obnoxious erection; he kept his back to it with ridiculous care, while they talked.
“We have come to something like a settlement at last,” said the lawyer briskly;— “confusion take the dog! I can hardly hear myself speak. — We are to meet at the Chapter House at five, Mr. Dean, if that will suit you: Mr. Swainson, the Bishop, Canon Rowcliffe, and myself. I think he is inclined to be reasonable at last.”
The Dean shook his head gloomily.
“Ah, you will see it turn out better than you expect. Let me whisper something to you. There is an action commenced against him for shutting up a road across one of his farms at Middleton, and it will be fought stoutly. One suit at a time will be sufficient to satisfy even Mr. Swainson.”
“You don’t say so? This is good news!” cried the Dean, with unmistakable pleasure. “Certainly, I will be there.”
“And — I am sure I need not hint at it — you will be ready to meet Mr. Swainson halfway?”
The Dean looked gloomy again. But at this moment a long loud howl, more frenzied, more fiendish than any which had preceded it, seemed to proclaim that the dog knew his reign was menaced, and, like Sardanapalus, was determined to go out right royally. It was more than the Dean could stand. With an involuntary motion of his hands to his ears, he nodded and fled with unseemly haste to a place less exposed, where he could in a seemly and decanal manner relieve his feelings.
The best-laid plans even of lawyers will go astray, and when they do so, the havoc is generally of a singularly wide-spread description. The meeting in the chapter-house proved stormy from the first. Whether it was that the writ in the right-of-way case had not yet reached Mr. Swainson, and so he clung to his on
ly split-straw, or that the Dean was soured by want of sleep, or that the Bishop was not thorough enough — whatever was the cause, the spirit of compromise was absent, and the discussion across the chapter-house table threatened to make matters worse and not better. Whether the Dean first called Mr. Swainson’s enclosure the “toadstool of a night,” or Mr. Swainson took the initiative by styling the Dean the “mushroom of a day” (the Dean was not of old family), was a question afterwards much and hotly debated in Bicester circles. Be that as it may, the high powers at length rose from the table in dudgeon and much confusion.
There was behind the Dean at the end of the chapter-house a large window. It looked directly down upon what he, in the course of the discussion, had more than once termed “The Profanation,” and since the eventful day of Mr. Swainson’s match at croquet it had been, by the Dean’s order, kept shuttered, to the intent that, when occupied in the chapterhouse, the Profanation might not be directly before his eyes. On this occasion the shutter was still closed; it may be that this phenomenon had weakened Mr. Swainson’s not over-robust resolves on the side of amity.
The Dean was a choleric man. As the party rose, he stepped to this shutter and flung it back. He turned to the others and said excitedly —
“Look, sir; look, my Lord! Is that a sight becoming the threshold of a cathedral? Is that a thing to be endured on consecrated ground?”
They stepped towards the window, a wide low-browed Tudor one, and looked out. The Dean himself stood aside, grasping the shutter with a hand that shook with passion. He could see the others’ faces. He expected little show of shame or contrition on that of Mr. Swainson, but he did wish to bring this hideous thing home to the Bishop, who had not been as thorough in the matter as he should have been. Still, as a bishop, he could not see that thing there in its horrid reality and be unmoved!
No, he certainly could not. Slowly, and as if reluctantly, his lordship’s face changed; it broke into a smile that broadened and rippled wider and wider, second by second, as he looked. His color deepened until he became almost purple! And Mr. Swainson? His face was the picture of horror: there could not be a doubt of that. Confusion and astonishment were stereotyped on every feature. The Dean could not believe his own eyes. He turned in perplexity to the lawyer, who was peeping between the others’ heads. His shoulders were shaking and his face was puckered with laughter.
The Bishop stepped back. “Really, gentlemen, I think it is hardly fair of us to play the spy. This is no place for us.” He was a kindly man; there never was a more popular bishop in Bicester, and never will be.
At this the Canon and the lawyer lost all control over themselves, and their laughter, if not loud, was deep. The Dean was immensely puzzled, confused, perplexed, wholly angry. He did at last what he should have done at first, instead of striking an attitude with that shutter in his hand. He looked through the window himself. It was dusty, and he was somewhat near-sighted, but at length he saw; and this was what he saw.
In the further corner of the ugly enclosure, a couple of lovers billing and cooing; about and around them Mr. Swainson’s big dog performing uncouth gambols. Bad enough this; but it was not all. The unsuspicious couple were Frank Swainson and — the Dean’s daughter. Frank’s arm was round her, and as the Dean looked, he stooped and kissed her, and Clive gazed with her brave eyes full of love into his and scarcely blushed.
When the Dean turned round he was alone.
Was it very wrong of them? There was nowhere else, since this miserable fracas began, where, away from others’ eyes, they could steal a kiss. But into Mr. Swainson’s plot no window, save a shuttered one, could look; the door, too, was close to one of the side doors of the cathedral, and you could pop in and out again unseen, and as for the big dog, Frank and Tiger were great friends. So if it was very wrong, it was very easy and very nice, and — faciles descensus Averni.
For one hour the Dean remained shut up in his study. At the end of that time he put on his hat and walked across the Close. He knocked at Mr. Swainson’s door, and, upon its being opened, went in, and did not come out again for an hour and five minutes by Mrs. Canon Rowcliffe’s watch. I have not the slightest idea of what passed there. More than two thousand different and distinct accounts of the interview were current next day in Bicester, but no one, and I have examined them all with care, seems to me to account for the undoubted results: — Imprimis, the disappearance next day from Mr. Swainson’s plot of the famous hoarding, which was not even replaced by the old iron railing. Secondly, the marriage six weeks later of King Pepin and Sweet Clive.
THE DEANERY BALL.
On a certain May afternoon, when the air was so soft and the sun so brilliant that Mrs. Vrater, the wife of the Canon in residence at Gleicester, was inclined to think the world more pleasant than it should be, she was surprised by an invitation which promptly restored the due equilibrium. In her own words, it took her breath away. Despite some slight forewarnings, or things which should have served as such, she could hardly believe her eyes. Yet there it was before her in black and white, and Italian penmanship; and, being a woman of character, instead of sitting down and giving way to her natural indignation, she — no, she did not accept the fact; on the contrary, she put on her best bonnet and mantle, and contrived during this simple operation to efface from her mind all consciousness of the existence of the invitation. Thus prepared she left the residence by the back door, and, walking quietly round the Abbot’s Square, called at the Deanery. Mrs. Anson was at home. So was the Dean.
“My dear Mrs. Anson the most ridiculous thing!” began the visitor; “really you ought to know of it, though contradiction is quite unnecessary. It carries its own refutation with it. Have you heard what is the absurd report which is abroad in the city?”
“No,” answered the Dean’s wife, who was sitting in front of a pile of cards and envelopes. Her curiosity was aroused. But the Dean had a miserable foreboding of what was to come, and writhed upon his seat.
“It is asserted that you are going to give a dance at the Deanery! Ha! ha! ha! I knew that it would amuse you. Fancy a ball at the Deanery of all places!” And Mrs. Vrater laughed with so fair a show of airy enjoyment that the Dean plunged his head into a newspaper, and wished he possessed the self-deceptive powers of the ostrich. This was terrible! What could have induced him to give his consent? As for Mrs. Anson, she dropped the envelope she was folding, and prepared for battle.
“Dear Mrs. Vrater, why should you think it so absurd?” she asked, smiling sweetly, but with color a little heightened.
“At the Deanery? Why, your position, dear Mrs. Anson, and — and — how can you ask? It would have been quite a Church scandal. You would be having the Præcentor hunting next. He would not stick at it,” with vicious emphasis. “But I knew that you never dreamt of such a thing.”
“Then I fear that you are not among the prophets, for we really propose to venture upon it. As for a Church scandal, Mrs. Vrater, the Dean is the best judge of that.”
Whereat the Dean groaned, poor man. Mrs. Vrater regarded him, he regarded himself, as a renegade; but he showed none of a renegade’s enthusiasm on his new side.
“You do intend to have a dance!” cried the Canon’s wife, with well-affected surprise, considering the circumstances.
“We do indeed. Just a quiet evening for the young people, though we shall hope to see you, dear Mrs. Vrater. Times are changed since we were young,” she added sweetly, “and we cannot stand still, however much we may try.”
If Mrs. Vrater had a weakness, it was a love for a style of dress which, though severe, was in a degree youthful. Her bonnet while Mrs. Anson spoke seemed to attract and fix that lady’s eye. It must be confessed that at Mrs. Vrater’s age it was a youthful bonnet. However, she did not appear to heed this, but rose and took her departure with a shocked expression of countenance. She had given the poor Dean, her recreant ally, a very wretched ten minutes; otherwise she had not been successful. When Greek meets Greek neither is wont to ge
t much satisfaction. She said no more there; but she hastened to pay some other friendly calls.
The manner in which the Dean came to give his consent must be told at some length. There is a small house in a quiet corner of the Abbot’s Square at Gleicester, which stands back a few yards from the general line of frontage. It is not alone in this respect. The Deanery on the opposite side of the Square, and the Præcentor’s house — we beg his pardon, the Præcentory — in the far corner also shrink from the public gaze. But then there is, and very properly, the retirement of exclusiveness. In the small house in question such self-effacement must have a different origin; perhaps in the modesty of conscious insignificance, along with a due sense of the important neighborhood in which No. 13 blooms like a violet almost unseen. For Abbot’s Square is virtually the Close of Gleicester — at any rate, there is no other — while No. 13 is little more than a two-storied cottage with a tiled roof, and outside shutters painted green, and a green door with a brass knocker. The path from the wicket-gate to the unpretending porch has been known to be gay with patterns now rather indistinct, composed of the humble oyster-shell; and the occupants have varied from a bachelor organist, or an artist painting the mediæval, to the Dean’s favorite verger.
Such was the little house in the Abbot’s Square; but Gleicester, sleepy old Gleicester, arose one morning to find a rare tit-bit of news served up with its breakfast. Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Curzon-Bowlby, a fashionable couple bent on retrenchment, had taken No. 13 for the summer. They brought with them a letter of introduction from the Marquis of Gleicester, and owing to that, and something perhaps to the three letters which distinguished Mrs. Curzon-Bowlby’s card from the pasteboards of the common throng, they were received by the Deanery people with enthusiasm, at the residence with open arms. The most select of coteries threw wide its doors to the tenants of No. 13. The Dean might be seen of a morning strolling in the little garden, and his wife’s carriage of an afternoon taking up and setting down in front of the green shutters. The Archdeacon and the Præcentor, nay, the very minor canons followed the Dean’s lead. And Gleicester, seeing these things, opened its eyes — its mouth was always open — and awoke to the fact that the little house had risen in the world to a very giddy height indeed.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 249
