The Man Who Understood Women and Other Stories/The Bishop's Comedy
THE BISHOP'S COMEDY
I
The Bishop of Westborough had seldom found himself in a more delicate position. Since Sweetbay objected so strenuously to its rector being a dramatist, Sweetbay was clearly no place for the rector; and it devolved upon his lordship to intimate the fact. But secretly his lordship was also guilty of dramatic authorship, and instalments of his comedy were even now in the hands of that accomplished actress, Miss Kitty Clarges. For this reason, and another, the Bishop had wakeful nights.
However, he did what was required. With all his customary blandness, and perhaps a shade more, he pointed out to the Rev. Baker Barling that the parish of Sweetbay was unsuitable for him, and offered him instead a living which commended itself to the Barlings not at all. Indeed, Mrs. Baker Barling was so highly incensed by the removal, that the rector had on several occasions to say "My dear!" to her reprovingly.
The Bishop was young for a bishop. His classical features, and the dignity of his carriage, would have compelled attention even if he had been a mere man. He never said anything noteworthy, but he voiced the sentiments of the unthinking in stately language. This made him generally admired. It is not to be inferred that he was insincere—he had been granted a popular mind; he shared with the majority a strong aversion from disagreeable truths. His widest reflections were bounded by the word "Unpleasant," and every truth that was unpleasant was to the Bishop of Westborough "one of those things that are better left undiscussed." He had a warm affection for this phrase, which occurred in all his articles for the cultured reviews. It was a phrase that suggested much earnestness of thought, while it spared him the exertion of thinking at all.
Domestically he had been no less fortunate than in his mental limitations. He possessed a little wife, who listened to him with the utmost patience, and he had seen both his girls make brilliant matches in their first season. The history of the bridegroom had, in each case, been "one of those things that are better left undiscussed." Accordingly, the Bishop boasted a grateful heart; in fact when he reflected how abundantly Providence had blessed him, he was more than normally horrified to think of the impious murmurings of the poor.
That a personage of his environment and disposition had been tempted towards so unepiscopal a course as writing a comedy, proves how true it is that nothing happens but the unforeseen. It was one of the speediest conquests of Miss Clarges' career—a career in which peers had been plentiful, but prelates had hitherto been lacking. He had made her acquaintance at a reception—she was clever off the stage as well as on it and had always tempered her indiscretions with tact; duchesses called her "dear." He thought her the most fascinating woman he had ever met, and talked to her about the conditions of the English stage with considerable satisfaction to himself.
"What a dramatist your lordship would have made if you had not been a bishop!" she murmured, with rapt eyes.
"Oh—er—you are jesting," said the Bishop, asking for more.
"No, indeed—I mean it," returned the lady reverently. "You have what we call the 'sense of the theatre.' And it is so rare! You startled me just now—you know by intuition things that the professional dramatist needs years of experience to find out. I can't tell you how extraordinary it is!" She regarded him as if she were being confronted by a miracle.
Partly because he was very vain, and partly because Miss Clarges was very good-looking, the lie that she forgot almost as soon as it was spoken had lingered caressingly with the Bishop. Sitting in the Palace one afternoon with nothing to do, he found himself scribbling "Act I.—A Drawing Room." He had no definite intention of continuing, still less had he a definite plot; but like everyone who is deficient in self-criticism, he wrote with prodigious facility, and his first act was finished in a few days.
Miss Clarges had been a good deal surprised to receive a semi-humorous note from the Bishop of Westborough, reminding her of their conversation and hinting that he would be glad to have her opinion of "a dramatic bantling." Tea and a tête-à-tête followed in the lady's boudoir. She found Act I all that she had dreaded, and told him it was most original. Beaming with importance, he perpetrated Act II, and read her that. She was contemplating a season of management, and in sanguine moments reflected that a practised hand might knock the Bishop's comedy into something like shape, and that the Bishop's name on the bills would be well worth having. So she offered various suggestions about the leading part, and was at home as often as he chose to call—and for some weeks he had chosen to call very often indeed.
Remember that he was only fifty. He had married when he was twenty-five, married a girl who was taken by his handsome face, and who brought him a very respectable dower. Though the dower had fascinated him more than the girl, the courtship had comprised his sentimental experiences. As has been said, he had had no reason to complain of his choice—he had been remarkably successful in all his relationships—he felt that his wife worshipped him, and her worship, and his worldly progress, had contented him fully. But now, for the first time in his career, he was thrown into intimate association with a woman who had captivated those who were seeing life, and those who had seen it—and the Bishop of Westborough fell in love with her as violently as many wiser men had done before him.
As for her, it was the first time in the woman's career that she had been openly admired by a bishop. At the beginning she was attracted by his reputation—much as her youngest adorers had been attracted by her own—but presently she was attracted by his homage. He appealed to her one weakness, her vanity. Though she thought it a pity that he wanted to write a comedy, she considered him a great man; his profound belief in himself, supported by a nation's esteem, imposed on her. To have made a conquest of a pillar of the Church flattered her inordinately; the novelty of the situation had its effect on the actress, too—and, to her unspeakable amazement, Kitty Clarges fell in love with the Bishop.
It was at this juncture that circumstances had forced him to mortify the rector of Sweetbay.
"The affair makes me doubt whether I ought to proceed with my own play," he admitted to her one afternoon.
"My dear friend!" She meant "What rot!" but she no longer said "What rot!" even to other actresses; and she wore dove-coloured gowns, and had been to hear him preach. The higher life was a little trying, but she liked to feel worthier of him.
"My action in the matter may be misconstrued. Of course, I've simply deferred to the local prejudice, but it may be thought that I disapprove of the man's tendencies. If I figured as a dramatist myself a little later, I might be placed in an ambiguous position. … Perhaps we might overcome the difficulty by a pseudonym?"
She looked blank. "Your lordship's name will be a draw; I'm afraid a pseudonym would mean waiving a great deal."
"Financially? The pecuniary result is not important to me."
But it was important to her. "If the secret were really kept, you'd be waiving all the kudos too," she added.
"Well, we must consider," said the Bishop, clinking the ice in his glass; "you shall advise me—though I fear I'm exceeding an author's privileges. By the way, does the manageress always offer the author a whisky-and-soda?"
"She offered you an alternative," said Miss Clarges, laughing; "the whisky-and-soda was your choice. But you don't really mean to throw the comedy up, do you? Think of poor me!"
The Bishop's eyes were eloquent. "Thinking of you," he said, after a lingering gaze, "I have this to say: you will be put to considerable expense in bringing out my work, and, novice as I am, I'm aware that a theatre is a heavy speculation; if I withhold the advantage of my name from the piece, I shall claim to share your risk."
"You are very generous, dear friend; I don't think I could say 'yes' to that."
"It is no more than fair."
"I'd rather not. I—I shouldn't care for you to find money for me!" said Kitty Clarges—and was conscious that she had soared into the higher life indeed.
"You are scarcely treating me as the dear friend you allow me to believe myself," urged the Bishop, missing the greatest compliment of his life.
"Oh!" she said under her breath.
"I should be serving my own ends. And besides"
"Besides—what?"
"It would make me very happy to think that I served you."
Her eyelids fell. "You have served me."
"I rejoice to hear it. May I ask how?"
"You've served me by your friendship. You've given me different thoughts, taken me out of myself, done me good—in some ways." She sighed deeply. "I've learnt that there are so much realer things than the shams that satisfied me before we met. I've been a very … worldly woman; you know, don't you?"
"Few human beings are stronger than temptations, child," he said melodiously; "and yours must have been many."
"I used to want you to think me better than I am. Now I—I do and I don't. Oh, I can't ex- plain!"
"You are showing me your heart—you need not spell it."
"I suppose what I mean really is that I want you to know me as I am, and yet to like me just as much. I wonder if you would?"
He laid a gentle hand upon her shoulder. "Why not put me to the test?"
"I daren't," she said.
"Am I so hard?"
She shook her head, silently.
"What then?"
"I'm so bad," she whispered. She drooped a little nearer to him.
"Why do you say such things?" cried the Bishop; "you hurt me!"
"Haven't you met other sinners?"
"I would have had your past free from sin."
"Oh, my past?" she sobbed, and bowed herself in his arms. "My past is past—I'm sinning now!"
Much may be done by earnest endeavour, and he persuaded himself that his embrace was episcopal.
"My child," he murmured at last, soothing her tenderly, "I will not affect to misunderstand what you have said—it would be a false kindness to you. Nor will I be guilty of concealing the transgressions of my own heart. Were I a younger man, I might doubt the righteousness of owning that the attachment is mutual; but the years bring wisdom and at my age we see deeply. My duty is to help you, and I realise that I can help you only by a perfect candour. I acknowledge, therefore, that you are indeed most dear to me."
"Oh, you are great!" she exclaimed. "I shall see you still? Promise you'll come here—don't let me lose you! Say it! Say again you love me!"
"You are indeed most dear to me," repeated the Bishop, who thought this way of putting it sounded more innocent. He got up and paced the room with agitation. "You ask me if I will still come here. I do not disguise from myself that many might think that I should answer 'no'; many might hold it my duty to desert you in the conflict that must be waged, to leave you to bear the brunt of it alone. I am not one of them. Flight is at best the refuge of a coward. Doughtier than to flee temptation is to confront and conquer it." He swept the hair from his brow with a noble gesture. "I recognise that my highest duty is to share your struggles—to solace and sustain you. Yes, I will come! We have a mighty battle before us, you and I—and we will fight side by side, my comrade, till we win!"
In other words, he ventured to go to tea there all the same, and had whisky-and-soda when it wasn't tea-time.
II
How much of what the Stage Door Club said about them was fact and how much of it was fiction, is a thing that could be decided only by the Bishop or Miss Clarges—neither of whom is to be consulted on the subject. But the Rev. Baker Barling, who frequently dropped into the Club for the house dinner, or a game of poker, heard the gossip; and Baker Barling confided it to Mrs. Baker Barling; and Mrs. Baker Barling, whose wrath against the Bishop had in no way abated, manœuvered for the joy of condoling with the Bishop's wife.
Miss Clarges was paralysed one morning by a note in which "Mrs. Lullieton Meadows," mentioning that her husband was the Bishop of Westborough, requested the actress to receive her upon a matter of the utmost importance the same afternoon. The actress's first impulse was to be "out" when the lady called; her second, to telegraph to the Bishop for advice. The fear of driving Mrs. Meadows to extremities, and the thought that a telegram might fall into the wrong hands, prevented her adopting either course. She could only pray for the ability to persuade the visitor that her suspicions were unfounded, and she felt sick with misgiving as the day wore on.
How extraordinary of the woman! Whether she meant to be offensive, or pathetic, what a folly of her to come! On the stage, of course, such scenes were usual, and Kitty Clarges knew exactly how she would have to behave there—that she would be first mocking, then attentive, and finally moved to repentance. But the theatre was one thing, and life was another. In real life it was preposterous of a person to seek an interview and plead for the return of a husband's heart; in real life it was impossible to return a heart, even if one wished to do it. And in this case, the wish was lacking; Miss Clarges was so infatuated by the Bishop that she had even been jealous to remember that another woman had a legal claim to him.
At the tingle of the bell, she caught her breath. She had never seen "the other woman," and mixed with her apprehension was a strong curiosity to know what his wife was like. "Mrs. Meadows," announced the maid. The actress turned to the doorway, trembling, and saw that the lady was a dowdy little woman with a dreary face; she looked as if she lived at Tunbridge Wells.
"Mrs. Meadows—how good of you to call!"
Mrs. Meadows advanced awkwardly; it was evident that she was painfully embarrassed. "Miss Clarges? I hope I haven't put you to any inconvenience?" she murmured.
"It is an immense pleasure to me to meet you. Won't you sit down?"
For an instant the Bishop's wife hesitated. Then she sat at the extreme edge of a chair, and moistened her lips.
"My visit must appear very strange to you?"
"Most kind!" said Kitty Clarges. "How is his lordship getting on with his play? It'll soon be finished now, I suppose?"
"I daresay—I really don't know; I didn't come to talk about the play," Mrs. Meadows faltered; "I came because you might do more for me than anybody else alive! Miss Clarges, my husband is in love with you."
The start, the bewilderment in the eyes, was admirable. "My … dear Mrs. Meadows?"
"You need not trouble to deny it," said the lady quietly, "because he has acknowledged it to me. But that isn't all—you are in love with my husband."
"Are you here to insult me?" cried Miss Clarges, rising. "I have the honour to be one of his lordship's friends, he has been pleased to discuss his comedy with me. Not unnatural, I think? Especially as I hope to produce the piece. As for … what you say, there has never been a word, a syllable—our conversation might have been phonographed for all London to hear." The indignation of her voice quivered into pain. "I wouldn't have had this happen for the world—I can't understand it!" She struggled with a sob, and suppressed it proudly. "It's cruel!"
"I don't wonder that he admires you," said his wife thoughtfully "you have great talent. But I have seen one of your letters to him. Here it is!
Miss Clarges gasped, and looked at it. She sat down again very slowly. "All right," she said. "I am fond of your husband! Well?"
"It was finding your letter that made me write to you. I heard weeks ago that he was mad about you, but the letter showed me that you cared for him. Oh, I know that I oughtn't to have written! I considered a long time before I made up my mind. But there was so much at stake, I thought you might help me. If you will listen"
"What for?" exclaimed Miss Clarges. "What's the use of my listening? Even if I promised you not to see him again—I wouldn't promise it, but if I did—would it make him any fonder of you? Do you think, if I lost a man, I should beg the other woman to give him back to me? I should know she couldn't do it; I should know I might as well beg her to give me back—my innocence. And I shouldn't reproach her, either! I'd reproach myself! I should call myself a fool for not holding my own. Women like me don't lose the man they want—we know how easy it is for him to leave us, and we take the trouble to keep him. It's you good women who are always being left; after you've caught the man, you think you've nothing more to do. Marriage is the end of your little story, so you take it for granted it must be the end of his. The more you love him, the sooner you bore him. You go bankrupt in the honeymoon—you're a back number to him before you've been married a month—he knows all your life, and all your mind, and all your moods. You haven't a surprise in reserve for him—and then you wonder he yawns. Great heavens! To hold a man's interest, show him your heart as you pull out a tape measure—an inch at a time. I adore your husband; I venerate him! My guilty love has made me a purer woman. You can't realise that—I don't expect you to realise it; but surely you must know that—if you wept and went down on your knees to me—I couldn't say, 'Because the right's all on your side, he shall never think about me any more'?"
"You misunderstand the object of my visit," said Mrs. Meadows meekly. "I didn't come to weep to you; I didn't come to beg you to say that he should never think about you any more. I came to beg you to tell me what you find in him to love."
"Eh?" ejaculated Miss Clarges.
"I came to beg you to tell me what you find in him to love," repeated the elder woman in plaintive tones. "You see, to you he is only an episode; but unless I choose to make a scandal—and I have daughters to consider—I must expect to spend many more years with him. If you will help me to discover some attraction in him, it will make life far easier for me."
Kitty Clarges sat staring at her dumbly. "You f-find no attraction in him?" she stammered at last.
"It is unconventional of me to admit it to you; but, as I say, there is so much at stake—I feel justified in asking your assistance. To me he is tedious beyond words to tell. If you would explain why you adore him, if you would show me some merit, some spark of talent, or wit, or humour, something to make his pretensions less intolerable—you don't know how thankful to you I should be."
"Your husband is a great man." She spoke with a touch of uncertainty.
"Oh, no! And I should be foolish to ask so much—a moderately intelligent man is all that a woman like me has the right to expect. The Bishop is unfortunately very, very dull. Believe me, I have tried most conscientiously to be deceived by him. I used to read his Press notices and say, 'Look what the newspapers say about him—it must be true!' But I knew it wasn't. I used to listen to his sermons—there aren't many of them; they've been the same sermons for twenty years—and say, 'What lovely language, what noble thoughts! How proud his little Mildred should be!' But, though I was a young girl then, I knew that the lovely language was all sound and no sense, and that the noble thoughts came out of the Dictionary of Quotation. O Miss Clarges! you are a brilliant woman, far, far cleverer than I—he must have some stray virtue that my earnest search hasn't brought to light or you couldn't gush so romantically about him. Help me to see it! Think how he wearies me—tell me what the virtue is!"
The actress was breathing heavily, her nostrils fluttered; on her bloodless cheeks the delicacy of "Maiden-bloom" stood out in unbecoming blotches. To hear that she idolised a man whom this little provincial in last year's fashions disdained as a bore, robbed her of speech. She had not believed there could be such depths of humiliation in the world.
Some seconds passed, while the suppliant watched her wistfully.
"If you don't care for your husband, I'm afraid I couldn't teach you to love him."
"No, no; I only thought you might help me to put up with him; I'm not unreasonable—I'd be grateful for small mercies. If you'd mention a ray of interest in him, I'd keep my eyes on that, and make the most of it. … You're not vexed with me for coming?"
"Oh, not at all; I—I suppose you've been very … amiable, our interview has been rather quaint; I'm sorry I can't oblige you."
"Well," sighed Mrs. Meadows, "it can't be helped. But I must say I'm disappointed! When I found out there was a woman in love with him, it simply amazed me! I felt it only right to consult you—it seemed such an opportunity to improve matters at home. Still, there it is, if you can't tell me, you can't!" She was very downcast. "Then I'll say 'Good-afternoon.’"
"May I offer you some—tea?" quavered Kitty, clinging to the mantelpiece.
"Thank you so much, but I'm afraid I must be going now; I promised to see our Secretary at the office of the Mission Fund at four o'clock. Good-bye, Miss Clarges. You needn't tell the Bishop that I called. It has been quite useless."
She sighed herself out.
Now, though Kitty Clarges endeavoured to persuade herself by turns that Mrs. Meadows was a fool incapable of appreciating her husband, and that Mrs. Meadows was a diplomat scheming to disenchant her with him, both endeavours were unsuccessful. She could not think the woman an utter idiot, and still less was it possible to think her a genius. Kitty Clarges was less entranced by the Bishop in their next meeting. Between them lurked a dowdy little figure, regarding her with astonished eyes. The astonishment shamed her as no homily could have ever done. The figure was present at all their meetings, and often she lost sight of the Bishop's classical features and could see nothing but his wife's eyes wondering at her. His eloquence was no longer thrilling—she was obsessed by the knowledge that it wasn't good enough for the woman in the modes of Tunbridge Wells.
Before long the sight of her own dove-coloured gowns began to get on her nerves, and gradually she discarded them. Once, when the Bishop proposed to visit her, she told him that she would be lunching out. A few days later she wrote that unforeseen circumstances denied her the hope of producing his comedy. His urgent letter of inquiry remained unanswered. When he called for an explanation she was "not at home."