Tales of two people

PRUDENCE AND THE BISHOP

MISS PRUDENCE was astonishingly pretty; it was far from tedious to lie on the bank of the stream and watch her, while her second brother – a lanky youth of fifteen – fished for non-existent trout with an entirely unplausible fly.

“So Clara Jenkins said that about me?”

I nodded. “Just let it fall, you know, Miss Prudence, in the give-and-take of conversation.”

“If you weren’t a stranger in our neighbourhood, you wouldn’t pay any attention to what a girl like that says.”

“Oh, but it was about you,” I protested.

Prudence looked at me as if she were thinking that I might have been amusing when I was young.

“What was the word Clara used?” she asked.

“There were two words. ‘Calculating’ was one.”

“Oh, was it?”

“Yes. The other was ‘heartless.’ ”

“I like that! It’s only what mamma tells me.”

“Your mother tells you?” My tone indicated great surprise: her mother is the vicar’s wife, and the alleged counsel seemed unpastoral.

“Yes – and it’s quite right too,” Prudence maintained. “You know how poor we are. And there are eight of us!”

“Five and three?”

“Yes: Johnny at Oxford, Dick at school, and Clarence to go soon! And the girls – you know what girls cost, anyhow!”

“They vary, I suppose?”

“Just you talk to mamma about that!”

That didn’t seem urgent. “Another time,” I murmured, “I shall be pleased to exchange impressions.”

I don’t think Prudence heard. She was looking very thoughtful, a minute wrinkle ornamenting her brow.

“The boys must have their education; the girls must have justice done to them.”

“To be sure! And so – ?”

“And why shouldn’t one fall in love with a man who – who – ”

“Would be delighted to do all that?”

“Of course he’d be delighted. I mean a man who – who could do it.”

“Rich?”

“Papa says differences in worldly position are rightly ordained.”

“No doubt he’s correct. Your man would have to be quite rich, wouldn’t he? Seven besides you!”

“Oh, we aren’t accustomed to much,” said Prudence, with a smile at me which somehow made me wish for a cheque-book and an immense amount of tact; a balance at the bank we will presuppose.

“And may I ask,” I resumed, “why you are selected out of all the family for this – er – sacrifice?”

She blushed, but she was wary. “I’m the eldest girl, you see,” she said.

“Just so,” I agreed. “I was very stupid not to think of that.”

“The others are so young.”

“Of course. It would be waiting till it was too late?”

“Yes, Mr Wynne.”

I interpolate here a plain statement of fact. The other girls resemble their mother, and the vicar’s type, reproduced in Miss Prudence, is immeasurably the more refined – not to say picturesque.

“Oh, if you won’t be serious!” sighed Prudence – though, as has been seen, I had said nothing.

“It certainly is not a laughing matter,” I admitted.

“How difficult the world is! Was Sir John at the Jenkins’s?”

“Sir John?”

“Sir John Ffolliot – of Ascombe, you know.”

“Tall red-faced young man?”

“Yes, very – I mean, rather. Rather tall, anyhow.”

“Oh yes, he was there.”

“When Clara talked about me?”

“So far as I recollect, he was not in earshot at that moment, Miss Prudence. But then I wasn’t in earshot while she talked to him. So possibly – ”

“Now she really is a cat, isn’t she?”

“I haven’t the smallest doubt of it. But you must make allowances.”

“I do. Still I can’t see why plain people are to say just what they like!”

“Nobody minds them,” I observed consolingly.

The conversation flagged for a moment or two. That didn’t matter; one can always look at the view.

“Is my hat crooked?” asked Miss Prudence with affected anxiety.

“I should say you’d get him, if you really want him,” I remarked.

My thoughts were switched off in another direction by Miss Prudence’s next utterance. I don’t complain of that; it was probably rightly ordained, as the vicar would have said; there’s something in a meadow and a river that resists middle age – and I don’t know that a blue frock, with eyes to match, and hair that —

“Do you happen to know how much a bishop gets?” asked Prudence.

“Not precisely, Miss Prudence. It varies, I believe – like what girls cost. All I know is that it’s never enough for the needs of his diocese.”

“Oh, isn’t it?” She looked rather troubled over this information.

“So the papers say – and the bishops too sometimes.”

“Still you wouldn’t call them exactly poor, would you?”

“I call them poor! Good Lord!” was my observation.

“You know our bishop’s Palace?”

“A charming residence, Miss Prudence – even stately.”

“And Sir John says he drives awfully good horses.”

“Let us rely on Sir John where we can.”

“And Mr Davenport says he gives away a lot.”

“Mr Davenport?”

“So he can’t be poor, can he?”

“Mr Davenport?”

“Oh, I beg pardon! But you’ve met him. How forgetful you are! Papa’s curate!”

“Dear me, dear me! Of course! You mean Frank?”

“Papa calls him Frank.”

“You all call him Frank.”

“I suppose we do – yes.”

“So I forgot his surname just for the minute. Does he call you Prudence?”

“What has that got to do with it?”

“Roughly speaking, it ranges from three to seven thousand a year. More for archbishops, according to scale, of course.”

“Well, that sounds plenty,” said Prudence.

(I have ascertained from Crockford’s Directory that the value of the vicar’s living is three hundred and twenty five pounds per annum.)

“Don’t be calculating, Miss Prudence!”

“And heartless?” The little wrinkle was on her brow again.

“That remark of Miss Jenkins’ seems to rankle!”

“I wasn’t thinking – altogether – of Clara.”

It seemed hard if somebody else had been calling her heartless too – or even thinking it. And all for listening to her mother! I tried to administer consolation.

“The thing is,” I observed, “a judicious balancing of considerations. Here, on the one hand, is justice to be done to the girls – in the way of accomplishments and appearance, I may presume? – and education to be given to the boys – it would be no bad thing if someone taught Dick how to make a fly, for example; on the other hand lie what I may broadly term your inclinations and – ”

I awoke to the fact that Miss Prudence had not been listening to the latter portion of my remark. She was rubbing the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other, and frowning now quite heavily. Then she twisted one little hand round the other; and almost inaudibly she said: “How can one balance considerations” – (She infused a pleasant scorn into her intonation of these respectable words) – “How can one balance considerations when – ?”

Primâ facie that “when – ” admitted of various interpretations. But I chose one without hesitation.

“Then why this talk about how much a bishop gets, you calculating heartless girl?”

She darted at me a look of fearful merriment.

“And they make them quite young sometimes in these days,” I added. And I rounded off my period by remarking that Sir John Ffolliot seemed a stupid sort of dog.

“Yes, isn’t he?”

“Might do for Clara Jenkins?”

“If I thought that – ” Miss Prudence began hotly.

“But the idea is preposterous,” I added hastily. “One of your sisters now?”

“That’s really not a bad idea,” she conceded graciously.

In fact, she had suddenly grown altogether very gracious – and I do not refer merely to the marked civility of her manner towards myself. The frown had vanished, the wrinkle was not: the hands were clasped in a comfortable repose. She looked across to me with a ridiculously contented smile.

“It’s such a good thing to have a talk with a really sensible man,” she said.

I took off my hat – but I also rose to my feet. To present me as a future bishop was asking too much of the whirligig of time. Not a kaleidoscope could do it! Besides, I wasn’t serious about it; it was just the meadow, the river – and the rest. In order to prove this to myself beyond dispute, I said that I had to go to the post office and despatch an important letter.

“To the post office?” said Prudence, displaying some confusion at the mention of that institution. “Oh, then, would you mind – it would be so kind – would you really mind – ?”

“Calling in at the parlour window and telling Mr Davenport that you’re going to have some tennis after tea? With pleasure, of course.”

“I didn’t know you knew he lodged there!” she cried.

“Pending promotion to the Palace, yes.”

I made that last remark after I had turned my back, and I didn’t look round to see whether Miss Prudence had heard it; it was, in fact, in the nature of an “aside” – a thing which may be heard or not at pleasure.

“Won’t you come too?” she called.

“Certainly not. I propose to meditate.” On these words I did turn round, and waved her farewell. I think she was indulging in a most proper forgetfulness of her brothers and sisters – and, incidentally, of myself. So I proceeded to the post office, although of course I had no letter at all to send.

I found Mr Davenport in flannels, sitting with his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe and reading. He was an engaging six-feet of vigour, and I delivered my message with as little rancour as could be expected under the circumstances.

“I think I’ll go,” he said, briskly knocking out his pipe.

It was some satisfaction to me to remind him that it was only half-past three, and that tennis didn’t begin till after tea. He put his pipe back between his teeth with a disappointed jerk.

“What are you reading?” I inquired affably. I must be pictured as standing outside the post office parlour window while conducting this colloquy.

He looked a trifle ashamed. “The fact is, I sometimes try to keep up my Latin a bit,” he explained, conscious of the eccentricity of this proceeding. “It’s Juvenal.”

“Not so very clerical,” I ventured to observe.

“A great moralist,” he maintained – yet with an eye distantly twinkling with the light of unregenerate days.

“I suppose so. That bit about prudence now – ?”

“About who?” cried he, springing to his feet and dropping his poet on the floor.

“Evidently you recollect! Nullum numen abest si sit Prudentia– ”

“Curiously enough, I’ve just been having a shot at a rendering of that couplet,” said Mr Davenport. As he spoke he approached the window: I sat down on the sill outside and lit a cigar.

“Curiously enough indeed!” said I. “May I be privileged to hear it?”

He threw out one arm and recited —

“Pretty well for the spirit, but none too faithful to the letter,” I remarked critically. “However, Dr Johnson is open to the same objection. You remember —

“I call that pretty bad.”

“Not much to the present point, anyhow,” I agreed.

“I had another rhyme – and after all the rhyme’s the difficulty. How about this? —

“Really you fire me to emulation,” I said. “I think I’ll try my own hand at it —

“Splendid!” he cried, puffing at his empty pipe.

This audacious departure from the original affected him powerfully. He laid a hand like a pair of tweezers on my wrist and cried excitedly —

“You’ve been talking to her!”

“So have you,” said I, “and to better purpose.”

By a subtle and rapid movement he was, in a moment, outside the door and stood facing me in the little front garden of the post office.

“I shouldn’t wonder if they began tennis before tea,” he remarked.

“You’ll find somebody to play a single. Good-bye!” He was turning away eagerly when something occurred to me. “Oh, by the way, Mr Davenport – ”

“Yes?”

“Do you think you’ll ever be a bishop really?”

“Only when I talk to her,” he said, with a confused yet candid modesty which I found agreeable.

“Go and do homage for your temporalities,” I said.

“I say – her mother!” whispered Mr Davenport.

“She probably thought the same when she married the vicar.”

He smiled. “That’s rather funny!” he cried back to me, as he started off along the road.

“So your son-in-law may think some day, my boy,” said I with a touch of ill-humour. No matter, he was out of hearing. Besides I was not, I repeat, really serious about it – not half so serious, I venture to conjecture, as the vicar’s wife!

To her, perhaps, Dr Johnson’s paraphrase may be recommended.

THE OPENED DOOR

“WE may float for ten minutes,” said the Second Officer.

After a pause the passenger remarked:

“I’m glad of it, upon my word I am.”

“You’re thankful for small mercies,” was the retort.

The passenger did not explain. He could not expect the Second Officer, or the rest of them, to sympathise with his point of view, or share the feelings which made him rejoice, not at the respite, but at the doom itself. Those who were not busy getting the women and children into the boats, and keeping the ship above water, were cursing the other vessel for steaming away without offering aid, or clutching in bewildered terror at anyone who could tell them how the collision had happened and what hope there was of salvation. The boats were got safely off, laden to their utmost capacity; lifebuoys were handed round, and, when they ran short, men tossed up for them, and the losers ransacked the deck for some makeshift substitute. The passenger took no part in the competition or the search. He stood with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his lips, waiting for the ten minutes to wear themselves away. His only grudge against fate lay in those superfluous ten minutes.

Left to himself, he began to think, lighting a cigarette. He had to use a fusee, which was a pity, especially for his last cigarette, but the wind blew fiercely. It was strange how much harm a man could do without being a particularly bad fellow, and what an impasse he could get himself into. He had drifted on, and things had fallen out so maliciously that, because of him who hated hurting anybody, women were weeping and children smirched, and an old man hiding an honoured head in shame. He had even been required to be grateful to the man he hated most in the world, because he had not been put in the dock. That stuck in his throat more than all the rest. He had been ready to pay his shot and go to gaol – he would rather have done five years than owed the thanks for escaping them – but in very decency he couldn’t insist on going; the trial would have killed the old man. So they had concocted a plan – a chance of a new life, they called it – and shipped him off to the other side of the world with fifty pounds in his pocket – the gift of that enemy. At least he could get rid of the money now; and, still smiling, he dropped his pocket-book over the side into the great heaving waves. He had always meant it to go there – God forbid he should use it – but he had hardly hoped to go with it. He would follow it soon now. The door whose handle he had shrunk from turning had opened of its own accord in a most marvellously convenient way. To throw oneself overboard is a cold-blooded impossible sort of proceeding; the old man and the women would have heard of it, and he really didn’t want to give them any more pain. But this catastrophe was – from a selfish point of view – incredibly opportune. Such an exit had the dignity of the inevitable, and left the “new life” an agreeable hypothesis from which he doubted not that much comfort would be sucked by those dear, loving, foolish folk at home. Much “new life” he would have led! But let them think he would. And hurrah for a collision in deep water!

Five minutes gone – and they were deep in the water. The skipper was on the bridge; the engineers had come up and, together with the crew and such of the passengers as had not got away in the boats, were standing ready to jump at the word. Some were praying, some swearing, most discussing the matter in very much the same tones as they used in speculating about the weather on deck after dinner; but they all kept their eyes on the skipper.

“I shall just,” said the passenger, peering over the side, “go straight down. It oughtn’t to take long,” and he shivered a little. It had just struck him that the process might be very unpleasant, however satisfactory the result.

There was a sudden movement of the deck under him. The skipper seemed to shout, and, waving his arms, began to run down from the bridge. Then everybody jumped. The passenger dropped his finished cigarette, kicked off his deck shoes – a purely instinctive action – and jumped too. “Here goes!” he said.

When he came up again, he found himself swimming strongly. His arms and legs were not asking his leave about it; they were fighting the water as they had been taught, and they promised to make a long bout of it. He had never felt so vigorous. It was great nonsense, prolonging the thing like this. If he had thought of it, he wouldn’t have jumped so clear, then he would have been sucked down. He saw heads bobbing here and there about him; one man shrieked aloud and disappeared. It was – less the shrieking – just what he wanted to do. But he couldn’t. It was all very well to want to die, but this strong body of his had a word to say to that. Its business was to live, and it meant to live if it could. Well, it had always been a rebellious carcass – that was the cause of a great deal of the trouble – and it evidently meant to have its own way for this last time.

And it began to infect him. For the life of him, he couldn’t give in now. It was a fight between him and the water. He might have been a brute, and a rogue, and all the other pretty names that had come as sauce to that wretched fifty pounds, but he had never been a coward or shirked a fight. It was all right – he must be drowned in the end. But he would keep it up as long as he could; he would see it through; and with strong strokes he met and mastered and beat down wave after wave, outlived head after head that sank round him, and saw the old ship herself go under with a mighty pother.

All at once he found himself within reach of a spar. He was getting tired, though full of fight still, and he clutched at it for all the world as though he were in love with life. Hallo! There was a boy clinging to it – one of the ship’s boys, whom he knew well.

“Get off!” shrieked the boy. “Get off! It’s mine.”

“All right, Johnny, we’ll share it.”

“It won’t take us. Get off. It’s not fair. Oh, it’s going under!”

It was. The passenger let go, but kept close to it. It wouldn’t bear Johnny and him, but it would bear Johnny alone; it would also, probably, bear him alone. And he was getting very tired. Johnny saw his face and, clinging tight, began to cry. The passenger laid hold again. How jolly it was to have something under one’s chest! Johnny had had it for a long while. And what’s a ship’s boy? Besides, it’s every man for himself at such a time.

Johnny’s end ducked and Johnny’s head dipped with it. Johnny came up whimpering piteously, and swore in childish rage at the intruder. He was not a pretty boy, and he looked very ugly when he swore.

“You’ll drown us both, you – !” he gasped.

“It would bear me,” replied the passenger, “and you shouldn’t swear, Johnny.”

Johnny blubbered and swore again.

For an instant the passenger, resting as lightly as he could on the spar, watched Johnny’s face.

“You’ve kept afloat some time,” he observed, with an approving air. He liked pluck in boys – even ugly whimpering boys. His end went under, and he came up gurgling and spitting. He felt now as if he had no legs at all.

Johnny had stopped swearing, but was blubbering worse than ever.

“Damn it,” said the passenger, “haven’t I made enough people do that?” And he added, “Ta-ta, Johnny,” and let go the spar.

His legs were there, after all, and they let him know it. For time unmeasured he battled for the life he was weary of, and would not let himself be pushed through the open door. But at last he crossed its threshold.

Johnny was drowned too. But then the passenger had always protested against his acts being judged by their consequences; and it doesn’t seem fair to take it against him both ways.

LOVE’S LOGIC 1

The Scene is a hall or corridor, lying between two conservatories, one on the right, the other on the left. Besides plants and other ornaments, the corridor is furnished with a couch and a small round table with an arm-chair by it. The time is between eleven and twelve in the evening.

Mr Marchesson’s back is visible in the doorway leading to the conservatory on the right.

MR M. (Speaking to unseen person in the conservatory.) So awfully sorry, but I absolutely promised to meet a man at the club. (Pause.) Beg pardon? Oh, a fellow named Smith – you don’t know him. (Pause.) Yes, I hope we shall meet soon, but I’m rather afraid I may have to go out of town. (Pause.) Good-night. (Backs a little further into the corridor.) Phew!

Miss G. (Speaking to unseen person in the conservatory.) Yes, of course we shall be friends. What? (Pause.) Oh yes, great friends, What? (Pause.) I don’t know – I may be going out of town. Good-night. (She backs into the corridor, throws her eyes upwards, and draws in her breath with a long sigh.)