Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories

Front matter

THE NOVELS OF G·A·BIRMINGHAM

LALAGE'S LOVERS

SPANISH GOLD

I. Minnie's Bishop

I.—MINNIE'S BISHOP

I

REALLY, Ronald," said Ethel Mendel, "your mother is very unreasonable. Just now, too, when we are having such a pleasant time."

She spoke to her husband, who was arranging a salmon cast in the smoking-room. The post had just arrived and she held an open letter in her hand. He glanced at it apprehensively. His mother was an old lady who made unreasonable demands of her children and usually carried through any scheme in which she was interested without regard for the feelings of other people.

"What is she at now?" he asked.

"She is sending a bishop here," said Mrs. Mendel. "And he is to stay a week."

"Good Heavens! We can't possibly have a bishop here. It—it wouldn't be decent."

The Mendels had taken a house in Connemara for the month of August, a house with some good fishing attached to it. Gilbert Hutchinson, a keen angler quite uninterested in bishops, was with them. Minnie, Ronald's youngest sister, had been admitted to the party as a companion for Mrs. Mendel.

"This is a most unsuitable place for any bishop," said Ronald, "and we are not at all the sort of people2"

Mrs. Mendel drew herself up.

"After all," she said, "we're not doing anything wrong. The apostles fished."

"But they didn't play bridge after dinner."

"We shall have to give up bridge while he's here. Your mother says he won't stay more than a week, and he may go away sooner."

Ronald referred to the letter which his wife handed to him.

"He wants," he said, "to see something of the west of Ireland while he's at home. At home! Where does he come from?"

"India, apparently. If you'd begun at the beginning of your mother's letter instead of the middle you'd have seen that at once."

"Then he's not a proper bishop, at all."

"Oh, yes, he is. He's a missionary bishop, and that's just the same as the ordinary kind, only worse; more severe, I mean."

"Minnie will have to stop smoking cigarettes in the drawing-room," said Ronald.

"Minnie is rather a difficulty. She's just the sort of girl who enjoys shocking people."

"She mustn't do it in my house," said Ronald. "I may not care for having bishops dumped down on me in this way, but while they're here they must be treated with proper respect. I'll speak to Minnie myself."

"Do. And, Ronald dear, before he comes I think you might lock up that novel you got the other day. I haven't read it, of course, but from what you told me I don't think2"

"There's nothing in the novel half so risqué as the things Minnie frequently says. I hope you'll make her understand "

"I thought you said you'd speak to her."

"I shall, about the smoking. The other warning will come better from you. When does the bishop arrive?"

"He may be here to-morrow," said Mrs. Mendel. "His plans appear to be rather unsettled. He is to drop in on us whenever he finds himself in this neighbourhood. Your mother says we're to have a room ready for him. Be sure to give Mr. Hutchinson a hint not to leave those sporting papers of his lying about. I wouldn't like the bishop to think we read them. They're—well, not very religious, are they, Ronald?"

"If I know anything of Gilbert Hutchinson he'll clear out of this before the bishop arrives. He's not what I call an irreligious man, but I don't think he could stand sitting down to dinner every night with a bishop."

Mr. Hutchinson acted up to his host's expectation. He recollected suddenly that he had an aunt in County Cork, and that it was his duty to pay her a visit while he was in Ireland. Minnie, on the other hand, expressed the greatest delight at the prospect of entertaining a bishop.

"There are one or two things I want you to be careful about," Ronald said to her. "When we have a bishop in the house2"

"Don't start lecturing me about the proper way to treat the clergy," said Minnie. "Bessie Langworthy, who is my greatest friend, happens to be married to a canon. I spent last Easter with them and lived for a fortnight in a cathedral close. What I don't know about the habits and tastes of Church dignitaries isn't worth mentioning."

"I suppose he'll want a sitting-room to himself," said Mrs. Mendel. "We shall have to turn your smoking-room into a study, Ronald."

"Sanctum is the proper word," said Minnie. "Bessie Langworthy's husband has a sanctum, not a study."

"I don't see," said Ronald, "how my smoking-room can be turned into a sanctuary without going to enormous expense."

"That remark," said Minnie, "shows how little you know about the clergy. A sanctum is as different as possible from a sanctuary. If you'd ever been inside Bessie Langworthy's husband's sanctum, you'd see the absurdity of what you say."

Mrs. Mendel interposed to save her husband's dignity.

"I hunted about the house this afternoon," she said, "and found a few books that we might put there for him. They were stacked away in the box-room, but I had them brought down and dusted. There are five volumes by a man called Paley, who seems to have been an archdeacon. I glanced into them and they looked all right. They are theology, aren't they, Ronald?"

"They won't do at all," said Minnie. "Bishops don't read books of that sort. What we want in the sanctum is a few novels of a rather2 You know the sort I mean, Ronald. I see that you have got 'On the Edge of a Precipice.' Now that would be the exact thing."

"Minnie," said Mrs. Mendel, "surely you haven't read that book! Ronald, I told you not to let it out of the smoking-room."

"Of course I've read it," said Minnie. "That's how I know the bishop will like it. Bessie Langworthy's busband, who is a canon2"

"I won't give that book to any bishop," said Ronald.

"I'm not asking you to force it on him," said Minnie. "I simply say that it should be left in the sanctum so that he can get it when he wants it. Bessie Langworthy's husband2"

"Bessie Langworthy's husband be hanged!"

"If you swear while the bishop's here, Ronald," said Minnie, "you'll shock him. I must also have a pound of tobacco for the sanctum; not cigars. Bishops don't smoke cigars. The reason is that it doesn't do for them to appear opulent, especially nowadays when people are so down on the Church. I'll have a box of my own cigarettes on the chimney- piece in case he doesn't care for a pipe."

"That reminds me," said Ronald, "that I can't have you smoking cigarettes all over the house while he's here."

"My dear Ronald! Don't be perfectly absurd. Bessie Langworthy's husband supplied me with cigarettes while I was there. Church dignitaries like women who smoke. It's a pleasant variety for them. Their own wives never do. By the way, is this bishop married?"

"Is he married?" said Ronald to his wife.

"Your mother doesn't say." She referred to the letter as she spoke. "Anyhow, his wife, if he has a wife, isn't with him."

"That's a comfort," said Minnie. "I could never have got on with a Mrs. Bishop. Now, if you two will excuse me, I'll go and give some instructions to the servants. There are a few things they mightn't be up to if they're not accustomed to bishops."

"I suppose," said Ronald, "that you know exactly how gaiters and aprons ought to be folded."

"Really Minnie," said Mrs. Mendel, "I think you'd better leave the servants to me."

"Certainly not," said Minnie. "You know no more about bishops than they do. You'd simply make a muddle, and what we want is to give the poor man a really pleasant time while he's with us."

"Ronald," said Mrs. Mendel a few minutes later, "I'm afraid that Minnie2"

Ronald lit a cigar gloomily.

"Your mother," she went on, "won't like the flippant way in which Minnie evidently means to treat the bishop. When she hears about it she'll blame us."

"I rather think," said Ronald, "that I'd better go down to Cork and pay a visit to Gilbert Hutchinson's aunt till this business is over."

"If only Minnie would do that! But of course she won't. She's enjoying herself."

II

Two days later the bishop arrived. It was half past four o'clock when he drove up to the doors. Ronald was out on the river. Mrs. Mendel and Minnie were in the drawing-room waiting for afternoon tea to be brought to them. The bishop was a young man, as bishops go. He did not look more than forty-five, but his face was lean and heavily lined. He gave Mrs. Mendel the impression of being a man of severe integrity, very little inclined to human weaknesses. She greeted him nervously.

"I expect," said Minnie, cheerfully, "that you'd like to wash your hands before tea."

"Thank you," said the bishop; "I've had a long drive."

Mrs. Mendel wished to ring the bell and summon a servant, but Minnie insisted on showing the bishop to his room. Before leaving him she glanced at his clothes, which were dusty.

"I dare say," she said, "that you'd like the loan of a clothes-brush. Ronald's dressing-room is next door. I'll get you one."

"Thanks," said the bishop, "but I see my bag is here, and I have a clothes-brush of my own."

"I thought," said Minnie, "that being a missionary bishop, you might perhaps2"

"Missionary bishops are poor, of course; but I have managed to save up enough to buy a clothes-brush."

"That's not what I meant. My idea was that, having lived so long among people who wear no clothes, you might have got out of the habit2"

"I assure you," said the bishop, "that our Indian fellow subjects dress most decorously."

"How nice of them! You must tell us all about them later on. Tea will be ready in the drawing- room and I mustn't keep you now. By the way, do you object to China tea?"

"No. I prefer it."

"That's all right. I merely asked because I thought you might consider it your duty to drink nothing but Indian tea with a view to attracting the natives to church."

Mrs. Mendel, who was deeply impressed by the austerity of the bishop's appearance, grasped the opportunity of Minnie's absence. She slipped into the smoking-room, removed "On the Edge of a Precipice," and placed the five volumes of Paley's works in a row on the table. She got back to the drawing-room in time to pour out tea for the bishop. He only drank one cup and took nothing to eat. This distressed Mrs. Mendel. She was accustomed to enjoying a solid meal at five o'clock and she regarded the bishop's abstinence as a kind of asceticism. Minnie talked fluently about golf, a subject which seemed only moderately interesting to the bishop. He said very little, but gazed at Minnie with an expression of some bewilderment. When it became quite clear that he did not mean to drink any more tea, she put down her cup and saucer and stood up.

"The bishop," she said, "would like to see his sanctum at once."

"My sanctum!" he said. "Have I one?"

"Yes," said Minnie, "you have. I arranged it for you myself. It used to be Ronald's smoking-room, but2"

"I mustn't turn Mr. Mendel out of his room," said the bishop. "It's bad enough to come here as an uninvited guest. I don't want to put you all to unnecessary inconvenience."

"It's a pleasure to us," said Minnie. "We know that a bishop can't get on without a sanctum. My friend Bessie Langworthy's husband has one, and he's only a canon."

The bishop, smiling apologetically, followed her out of the drawing-room.

"Here we are," she said, opening a door for him. "I hope you'll find it comfortable. I dare say now that you'd like to meditate a little over your sermon."

"Do I preach while I'm here?" The bishop asked the question in a tone of surprise.

"No," said Minnie. "Not unless you particularly want to. We shan't ask you to. As a matter of fact, we none of us like sermons. But you will have to preach again some time, I suppose."

"Yes; but not for a few weeks."

"Still, you'll naturally want to meditate over your sermon whenever it has to be preached. You can't meditate too much beforehand. Bessie Langworthy's husband always went to his sanctum after tea to meditate over his sermon."

She paused for an instant and then winked at the bishop. He started violently.

"My own impression is," she added, "that he generally went to sleep."

Her eye lit on the five volumes of Paley as she spoke.

"Dear me," she said, "I thought I had those books cleared away! You don't want them, do you?"

The bishop took the volume containing the "Christian Evidences" and looked at it.

"I read Paley some years ago," he said, "and I don't think I want to read him again."

"Quite right," said Minnie. "I'll get you a different sort of book. There was an excellent one here this morning called, 'On the Edge of a Precipice.' My sister-in-law must have carried it off. I'll fetch it."

"Please don't. If she's reading it "

"She isn't. Or if she is she ought not to be. It's not at all a proper book."

"Perhaps," said the bishop, "I'd better stick to Paley, after all. The novel may be exciting."

"It is, very."

"Then it might disturb my meditation, and I was up early this morning."

"Don't say another word," said Minnie. "You're perfectly right. Dinner is at eight. If I find that you haven't heard the dressing-gong, I'll come and knock you up myself."

She left the room, but came back again a few minutes later. The bishop, with a volume of Paley on his knee, was stretched in a deep chair.

"Excuse me," said Minnie. "I left a box of cigarettes here. Why didn't you take one?"

"Thank you," said the bishop, "but I don't smoke."

Minnie took a cigarette from the box and lit it.

"Ronald thinks," she said, "that you'll be shocked at my smoking; but I told him you wouldn't mind. Bessie Langworthy's husband keeps a special box of cigarettes for me when I am with them."

"I should rather like to meet Canon Langworthy," said the bishop. "He seems to be quite a remarkable man."

"He's a dear," said Minnie. "You're sure you don't mind my smoking?"

"There is a prejudice against ladies adopting the habit," said the bishop.

"So silly, isn't it? It's not really wrong, you know, not like marrying your deceased sister's husband."

"That," said the bishop, "is distinctly forbidden in the Prayer-book."

"Quite so," said Minnie, "and even if it wasn't, I shouldn't dream of doing it. I don't see how any self-respecting girl could put up with a second-hand husband. When I marry2 But I really mustn't disturb you any more. Your sermon will be on your mind."

The bishop thought, but was not quite certain, that she winked again, as she left the room.

Dinner, that night, began badly, because Ronald insisted on trying to talk about a recent Church congress in which the bishop had taken a leading part. He was aware that there had been a prolonged discussion about the Athanasian Creed, and he tried to discover, by a series of caution ques- tions, the bishop's opinion about the public recitation of that formula. But the bishop answered very vaguely, and did not appear to be much interested in the Athanasian Creed. He had, he thought, intercepted with his foot a kick which Minnie meant to reach her sister-in-law. It seemed to him that she was trying to call Mrs. Mendel's attention to the fact that there was something humorous about the discussion which Ronald had started. The idea of finding a latent joke in the Athanasian Creed was new to the bishop. He felt embarrassed and was afraid to commit himself to any remark, lest he should, unconsciously, contribute to the merriment in Minnie's eyes. Before the fish-plates were taken away Ronald's effort collapsed. He looked piteously at his wife, mutely urging her to start a fresh and more congenial topic. It was Minnie who came to the rescue of the party. She asked the bishop whether he knew how to crack the joint of his nose. He set down his wineglass abruptly and looked hard at her. Then he said that he did not believe that either his or any other nose had a joint. Ronald, frowning severely, said that the idea of cracking a nose was absurd. Minnie maintained that the thing could be done. By way of proving that she spoke the truth she seized her own nose, pulled it slowly down, gave it a sudden twist toward her left cheek, and produced a sharp click. The bishop appeared surprised, and asked her to be good enough to do it again. Ronald muttered something about monkey tricks. Minnie repeated her performance and this time the click sounded louder than before. Foreseeing that conversation with the bishop might be difficult, she had come down to dinner with a small watch in her hand. By snapping the case at the proper moment she secured an excellent effect. The bishop, greatly to the amusement of the servants, tried his own nose. Ronald, looking angrily at his sister, explained the trick.

"I thought," said Minnie, "that you'd like to know how to do it. With a little practice you'll be able to take in anybody. These little arts are so useful abroad, aren't they? I'm sure you'd find a thing like that most attractive to the heathen."

The bishop laughed suddenly. It may have been the idea of teaching high-caste Hindus to crack their noses that moved him. It may have been the way in which Minnie smiled at him. He seemed, for the rest of the evening, to prefer her conversation to Ronald's efforts to get back to the more orthodox subject of the Athanasian Creed.

III

It was that pleasant hour of the day between afternoon tea and the sounding of the gong which gives warning of the approach of dinner-time. Ronald Mendel and his wife sat on the gravel sweep in front of the house.

"Tomorrow," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction, "that bishop goes."

"I think," said Mrs. Mendel, "that he has enjoyed his visit. Your mother is greatly pleased. I had a letter from her this morning in which she said that she'd heard from him and2"

"Nothing could be more outrageous than Minnie's behaviour from start to finish. I've never for a moment felt safe. I've sat, so to speak, on the edge of a volcano."

"She took him off our hands," said Mrs. Mendel. "Be a little grateful, Ronald."

"She ought to be whipped."

"Ronald dear!"

"Well, she ought. Fortunately, I don't believe he understood half she said. Besides, I don't approve of dragging bishops into dangerous places. He came in wet to the waist the day she took him up the river in the punt. She must have upset him."

"He didn't seem to mind."

"No, but I did. I may not be much of a man for going to church, but I think bishops ought to be treated with some respect."

"Still," said Mrs. Mendel, "your mother seems greatly pleased."

"She won't be when she sees him. I don't know how Minnie managed it, but his face is all scratched."

"That happened when she took him out to gather blackberries. It doesn't seem to have been her fault. He said he slipped and rolled down a bank."

"Bishops ought not to be taken near banks of that sort," said Ronald. "And yesterday I found him reading 'On the Edge of a Precipice.' If he tells my mother that he got that book in my house I shall never hear the end of it."

"He won't tell her. He has too much sense."

"He has very little sense—less sense than any bishop I ever heard of. Good Lord! Look at him now!"

The bishop and Minnie emerged from the shrubbery at the far end of the lawn. Their appearance justified an exclamation. Minnie had grasped the bishop's wrists and was towing him towards the house. He was hanging back; but every now and then Minnie, exerting herself her full strength, succeeded in breaking into a trot. The bishop appeared to be a good deal embarrassed. Ronald took his pipe out of his mouth and laid it on the ground beside him.

"Congratulate me at once," said Minnie, breathlessly, "both of you, without an instant's delay. The bishop and I are engaged to be married."

"If this is any kind of a joke," said Ronald, "it strikes me as being in remarkably bad taste."

"It's not a joke," said Minnie. "It's quite true. Isn't it, Harold? Didn't you say your name was Harold?"

"Harold Cyril," said the bishop.

"I shall probably call you Hal after we are married," said Minnie.

"No bishop," said Ronald, "would marry a girl like you, Minnie."

"I assure you," said the bishop, "that if Miss Mendel—I mean to say—Minnie—can only bring herself to2 You know I'm only a missionary bishop."

"That's just it," said Minnie. "You don't understand in the least, Ronald. What the bishop says is that I'll be a help to him in his work. You said that, didn't you, Harold?"

"Yes," said the bishop, bravely.

"You'd be a help!" said Ronald. "Oh, hang it all, Minnie, that's a bit too thick!"

"Not at all," said Minnie. "My manners and general gaiety of disposition are just what are wanted to attract the heathen. Isn't that what you meant, Harold?"

"Not exactly," said the bishop. "What I feel is2"

"Still, I shall attract them. You can't deny that. After all, I attracted you."

II. Sonny

II.—SONNY

IT WAS late in November and it had been raining without cessation for more than three weeks—not vigorously, as I have seen it rain in New York and Philadelphia, but with a dull persistence, as it rains nowhere else except in the West of Ireland. Rain there seems—at certain, indeed at most seasons of the year—to be the normal thing, as if the genius that presides over the weather had turned on rain and then gone to sleep. The country was saturated, and I, though well inured to the climate of Connaught, felt that the pervading damp was getting on my nerves. I was dry in bed at night—I did not seem to be dry anywhere else. I confess that my temper was bad.

John Cassidy met me on the road a mile from my house at four o'clock one afternoon. He was standing at the bottom of a muddy lane that leads up to the wretchedly poor cabin in which he lives. I realised at once that he was waiting for me. I sighed.

John Cassidy is an excellent fellow—what we call a decent poor man—and I would do a good deal for him; but I did not want to do anything for him just then. I wanted to get home and change my sodden clothes. I had been tramping through the rain all day. I wanted hot tea. I wanted tobacco. I wanted a deep chair in front of a fire.

John Cassidy also wanted something—something from me. Therefore I sighed.

"I'd be glad," he said, "if your reverence would step up and take a look at herself—and maybe say a word to her that would do her good."

Herself was, of course, Mrs. Cassidy. It is in this way that we speak of our wives in the West of Ireland. It is, I think, a beautiful and respectful way of speaking of them. The use of the pronoun in this absolute fashion suggests that for each of us there is no other woman in the world, but only the one; and that is as it should be.

"There's a kind of weakness on her," said John Cassidy; "and it's worse she's getting instead of better."

I grasped at a ray of hope. I am, after all, a clergyman—not a doctor. A weakness is a physical rather than a spiritual malady. I could scarcely be expected to cure her.

"Why don't you get the doctor if she's ill?" I asked.

I was standing in a pool of water, but that made very little difference to me. My boots had been soaked through for hours.

"I had the doctor," said Caasidy. "I had him four times and I paid him twice, and it's very little good he did her."

Doctors are not of much use if you take them off the beaten track. In the face of a recognised disease—measles, pneumonia, or appendicitis, something they can look up in a book—they make some kind of fight. When they come up against anything as vague and formless as a weakness they can very rarely do anything.

"He gave her a bottle, I suppose," I said bitterly.

In Ireland we describe every medicine as a bottle and we are beginning to lose faith in bottles.

"For all the good it did her," said Cassidy, "it might as well have been water that was in it; though I will say for that bottle it smelt powerful bad when you took the cork out of it."

"I don't see," I said, "that I'm likely to be of much use."

"It could be," said Cassidy, "that if your reverence was to speak a word to her it might comfort her."

This was, of course, possible. I followed John Cassidy up the lane.

On the way to the cabin he explained more fully the nature of the weakness.

"It's been coming on her," he said, "ever since the young lad went from us. Two years ago he took the notion into his head that he'd go to America—and he went."

I knew that. We had all discussed the departure of the Cassidys' son; but he had been gone two years and I had seen Mrs. Cassidy many times since. She seemed none the worse. Cassidy read my thoughts with that uncanny intuition which you often find among west of Ireland peasants.

"At the first go off," he said, "you wouldn't have thought she minded—no more than another would anyway; but the weakness was within, in the inside of her, and it's lately that it has begun to come out."

I listened to a list of symptoms. It seemed that Mrs. Cassidy had lost heart and no longer took any pleasure in life. She baked bread; she washed clothes; she fed the pig—but she did these things without zest.

"It's seldom ever I can get her to go as far as the town on a market day," said Cassidy; "and she doesn't care if she never saw a neighbour woman or heard a word of what's going on.

"You couldn't get her to put a shawl over her head and go as far as the road—not if you was to offer her a fistful of gold for doing it."

This was plainly an evil case; but it seemed scarcely likely that my words would charm away so lethal an apathy.

"You'd think now," said Cassidy, "that she was no more than able just to put the one foot in front of the other."

He whispered these words in my ear, for we had reached the door of the cottage and it stood open. I went in and Cassidy followed me.

Mrs. Cassidy was sitting on a stool in the chim- ney corner, crouching over a fire that had burned low. There was a great round pot at her feet, with glowing cinders underneath it and grey, ash-covered coals piled on its lid. In such pots the west of Ireland people bake their bread, and Mrs. Cassidy, no doubt, had a loaf in hers; but she was not watching her pot.

I got accustomed to the gloom of the house and I could see that her eyes were fixed on something beyond the pot, beyond the chimney corner and beyond the house itself. They had a long, sorrowful look in them. For a while she seemed unconscious that we were in the room with her. Her husband roused her.

"Do you not see," he said, "that his reverence is here? Will you not give him a chair the way he'll be able to take an air of the fire? He's wet through so he is."

Mrs. Cassidy's courtesy overcame the weakness that was on her. She stood up and bowed to me with that air of quiet, unassertive dignity which the west of Ireland peasant possesses in common with the best-bred members of the English aristocracy. Neither squalor, on the one hand, nor the surroundings of the smart set, on the other, can rob a woman of this great-lady manner if it is born in her.

Having bowed, Mrs. Cassidy drew forward a chair and wiped the seat of it with her apron.

"It's pleased I am to see your reverence," she said, "either now or at any other time."

I sat down. John Cassidy gave me a meaning glance, and then said he was going out to see whether the young heifer had broken down the wall which separated her field from the potato patch. It is, I know, the habit of young heifers to break walls. The young of all species do it. I have heard of young girls—but their doings are no concern of mine. They may break all the walls of all the conventions without interference from me.