KING PEPIN AND SWEET CLIVE.
Upon arriving at the middle of the Close the Dean stopped. He had beenwalking briskly, his chin from very custom a little tilted, but hiseyes beaming with condescension and general good-will, while anindulgent smile playing about the lower part of his face relieved forthe time its massive character. His walking-stick was swinging to andfro in a loose grasp, his feet trod the pavement of the precincts withthe step of an owner, he felt the warmth of the sun, the balminess ofthe spring air dimly, and somewhere at the back of his mind he wasconscious of a vacant bishopric, and of his being the husband of onewife. In fine, he presented the appearance of a contented, placid,unruffled dignitary, until he reached the middle of the Close.
But there, alas! the ferule of his stick came to the ground with amighty thud; the sweetness and light faded from his eyes as theyrested upon Mr. Swainson's plot; the condescension and good-willbecame conspicuous only by their absence. The Dean was undisguisedlyangry; he disliked opposition as much as lesser men, and met with itmore rarely. For Bicester is old-fashioned, and loves the Church andState, but especially the former, and looks up to principalities andpowers, and even now execrates the memory of a recreant Bicestrian,otherwise reputable, on account of a terrible mistake he made. It wasat a public dinner. "I remember," said this misguided man, "going inmy young days to the old and beautiful cathedral of this city. (Greatapplause.) I was only a child then, and my head hardly reached abovethe top of the seat, but I remember I thought the Dean the greatest ofliving men. (Whirlwinds of applause.) Well (smiling) perhaps I don'tthink quite that now." (Dead silence.) And so dull at bottom may evena man be whose name is not unknown in half the capitals of Europe,that this degenerate fellow never could guess why the friends of hisyouth from that moment turned their backs upon him.
Such is the faith of Bicester, but even in Bicester there areheretics. To say that the Dean rarely met with opposition, is to saythat he rarely met with Mr. Swainson, and that he seldom saw Mr.Swainson's plot. As a rule, when he crossed the Close he averted hiseyes by a happy impulse of custom, for he did not like Mr. Swainson,and as for the latter's plot, it was _anathema maranatha_ to him. TheDean was tall, Mr. Swainson was taller; the Dean was stubborn, Mr.Swainson was obstinate; so there arose between them the antagonismthat is born of similarity. On the other hand the Dean was stout andMr. Swainson a scarecrow; the Dean was comely and clerical, but notover-rich, Mr. Swainson was pallid, lantern-jawed, wealthy, and alawyer, and hence the dislike born of difference. Moreover, years agoMr. Swainson had been Mayor of Bicester, when there was a littledispute between the Chapter and the Bishop, and he showed so muchenergy upon the one side as to earn the nickname of the "Mayor of thePalace." Finally Mr. Swainson delighted in opposition as a cat inmilk, and cared to have a good reason for his antagonism no more thanpuss in the dairy about a sixty years' title to the cream-pan.
But a sixty years' title to his plot was the very thing which Mr.Swainson did claim to have. Exactly opposite his house--his father'sand grandfather's house, too--in which, said his enemies, they hadlived and grown fat upon cathedral patronage, lay this debatable land.His front windows commanded it, and on such a morning as this he lovedto stand upon his doorstep and gaze at it with the air of a dogwatching the spot where his bone is buried. But if Mr. Swainson wasright, that was just what was not buried there; there were no bonesthere. True, the smoothly shorn surface of the little patch wasdivided from the green turf around the cathedral only by a slight ironrailing, but, said Mr. Swainson, ponderously seizing upon hisopponent's weapon and using it with telling effect, it was of anothersort altogether: of a very different nature indeed. It had never beenconsecrated, and close as it was to the sacred pile, being in factseparated from it on two sides but by a yard of sunk fence, it did notbelong to it, it was not of it, quoth he; it was private property, theproperty of Erasmus John Swainson, and the appanage of his substantialred-brick house just across the Close.
And no one could refute him, though several tried their best, to hishuge delight. It cannot now be exactly computed by how many years thediscovery of his rights prolonged his life--not certainly by some. Hisliver demanded activity, namely, a quarrel, and what a coil this was!If he had been given the choice of opponents, he would probably havepreferred the Dean and Chapter, they were so substantial, wealthy, andall but formidable. And such a thorn in the side of those comfortablepersonages as these rights of his were like to be he could hardly haveimagined in his most sanguine dreams, or hoped for in his happiestmoments.
It was great fun stating his claim, flouting it in their faces,displaying it through the city, brandishing it in season and out ofseason; but when it came to making a hole in the smooth turf hithertoso sacred, and setting up an unsightly post, and affixing to it aboard with "Trespassers will be prosecuted. E. J. Swainson," the funbecame furious. So did the Dean, so did the Chapter, so did everysidesman and verger. Bicester was torn in pieces by the contendingparties, but Mr. Swainson was firm. The only concession that could bewrung from him was the removal of the obnoxious board. Instead of ithe placed a neat iron railing round his property, enclosing justthirty feet by fifteen. Such was the _status in quo_ on this morning,and with it the Dean had for some time been obliged to rest content.
And yet, sooth to say, the greatest pleasure of the very reverendgentleman's life was gone with this accession to the roundness andfulness of Mr. Swainson's. No more with the thorough satisfaction ofhitherto could he conduct the American traveller through the ancientcrypt, or dilate upon the beauty of the quaint gargoyles to theMarquis of Bicester's visitors. No; indeed that railed-in spot was aplague-spot to him, ever itching, an eyesore even when invisible, athing to be evaded and dodged and given the slip, as a Dean who is aDean should scorn to evade anything mortal. He winced at the merethought that the inquisitive sight-seer might touch upon it might,probe the matter with questions. He hurried him past it with avertedfinger and voluble tongue, nor recovered his air of kindlycondescension, or polished ease (as the case might be), until he wassafe within his own hall. Only in moments of forgetfulness could theDean now walk in his own Close of Bicester with the easy grace of oldtimes.
But on this particular morning the sunshine was so pleasant, the windso balmy, that he walked halfway across the Close as if the river ofLethe flowed fathoms deep over Mr. Swainson's plot; then it chancedthat his eyes in a heedless moment rested upon it; and he saw that aman was at work in the tiny enclosure, and he paused. The Dean knewMr. Swainson by this time, and did not trust him. What was this? Bythe man's side lay a small heap of grayish-white things, and he washolding a short-handled mallet, and was using it deftly to drive oneof the grayish-white things into the ground. From him the Dean's eyestravelled to a couple of parti-colored sticks, one at each end of theplot. What was this? A horror so terrible that the Dean stood still,and that remarkable change came over him which we have described.
Great men rise to the occasion. It was only a moment he thus stood andlooked. Then he turned and walked rapidly back to a house he had justpassed. A tall thin man was standing upon the steps, with the ghost ofa smile upon his face. For a moment the Dean could only stammer. Itwas such a dreadful outrage.
"Is that," he said at last, "is that there, sir, being done by yourauthority?" With a shaking finger he pointed to Mr. Swainson's plot.The tall man in a leisurely manner settled a pair of eyeglasses uponhis nose and looked in the direction indicated. "Ah, I see what youmean," he said at last with delicious coolness. "Certainly, Mr. Dean,certainly!"
"Are you aware, sir, what it is?" gasped the clergyman; "it issacrilege!"
"Pooh, nothing of the kind, I assure you, my dear sir. It's croquet!"
The tone was one of explanation, and there was such an air offrankness, of putting an end to an unfounded error, that the veinsupon the Dean's temples swelled and his face grew, if possible, redderthan before.
"I won't stay to bandy words with you----"
"Bandy!" cried the tall man, in
tensely amused. "Ha, ha, ha! youthought it was hocky! Bandy! Oh, no, you play it with hoops and amallet. Drive the balls through--so!"
And to the intense delight of the Close people, nine-tenths of whomwere at their windows, Mr. Swainson executed an ungainly kind ofgambade upon the steps. "Disgusting," the Dean called it afterwards,when talking to sympathetic ears. Now he merely put it away from himwith a wave of the hand.
"I will not discuss it now, Mr. Swainson. If your own feelings ofdecency and of what is right and proper do not forbid this--thisribald profanity--I can call it nothing else, sir--I have but one wordto add. The Chapter shall prevent it."
"The Chapter!" replied the other in a tone of singular contempt, whichchanged to savageness as he continued, "You are well read in history,Mr. Dean, they tell me. Doubtless you remember what happened when thepuissant king Canute bade the tide come no further. I am the tide, andyou and the Chapter sit in the chair of Canute."
The Dean, it must be confessed, was a little taken aback by thisterrible defiance. He was amazed. The two glared at one another, andthe clergyman was the first to give way; baffled and disconcerted, yetstill swelling with rage, he strode towards the deanery. Hisantagonist followed him with his eyes, then looked more airily thanever at his plot and the progress being made there, considered theweather with his chin at the decanal angle, and with a flirt of hislong coat-tails went into the house, a happy man and the owner of avastly improved appetite.
But the Dean had more to go through yet. At the door of his garden heran in his haste against some one coming out. Ordinarily, great man ashe was, he was also a gentleman. But this was too much. That, when thefather had insulted him, the son should almost prostrate him on hisown threshold, was intolerable--at any rate at a moment when he wassmarting with the sense of unacknowledged defeat.
"Good-morning, Mr. Dean," said the young fellow, raising his hat withan evident desire to please that was the very antipodes of his sire'smanner--only the Dean was in no mood to discriminate--"I have justbeen having a very pleasant game of croquet."
It is greatly to be regretted, but here a short hiatus in thenarrative occurs. The minor canons, than whom no men are more wantingin reverence, say that the Dean's answer consisted of two words, oneof them very pithy, very full of meaning, but in the mouth of a Dean,however choleric, impossible--perfectly impossible. Accounting this asa gloss, and the original reading not being forthcoming, we are drivento conjecture that the Dean's answer expressed mild disapprobation ofthe game of croquet. Certain it is that young Swainson, surpriseddoubtless at so novel and original a sentiment, only said,
"I beg your pardon."
"Hem! I mean to say that I do not approve of this. I will come to thepoint. I must ask you to discontinue your visits at my house." Theyoung man stared as if he thought the excited divine had gone mad; theDeanery was almost a home to him. "Your father," the Dean went on morecoherently, "has taken a step so unseemly, so--so indecent, has usedlanguage so insulting to me, sir, that I cannot, at any rate atpresent, receive you here."
Young Swainson was a gentleman, and moreover, for a very good reasonhereinafter appearing, the Dean failed to anger him. He raised his hatas respectfully as before, bowed slightly in token of acquiescence,and went on his way sorrowfully.
He had a singularly pleasant smile, this young gentleman, though thiswas not the time for displaying it. Mrs. Dean had once pronounced hima pippin grafted on a crab-stock, and thereafter in certain circles hewas known as King Pepin. He was tall and straight and open-eyed, withfaults enough, but of a generous youthful kind, easily overlooked andmore easily forgiven. Doubtless Mr. Swainson would have had his sonmore practical, cool-headed, and precise; but the shoot did not growin the same way as the parent tree. Old Swainson would not have beenhappy without an enemy, nor young Swainson as happy with one; and if,as the former often said, the latter's worst enemy was himself, he waslikely to have a tolerably prosperous life.
In a space of time inconceivably small the doings of the grim oldlawyer and the Dean's remonstrance were all over Bicester. Nay, fastas the stone had rolled, it had gathered moss. It was gravely assertedby people who rapidly grew to be eyewitnesses, that Mr. Swainson haddanced a hornpipe in the middle of his plot, snapping his fingers atthe Dean the while the latter prodded him as well as he could over therailings with his umbrella; and that only the arrival of Mr.Swainson's son put an end to this disgraceful exhibition.
Neither side wasted time. The Dean, the Canon in residence, and thePraecentor, an active young fellow, consulted their legal adviser, andtalked largely of ejectment, title, and seisin. Mr. Swainson, havingnine points of the law in his favor, and as well acquainted with thetenth as his opponents' legal adviser, devoted himself to the lighterpursuit of the mallet and hoop. In a state of felicity undreamt ofbefore, he played, or affected to play, croquet, his right handagainst his left, the former giving the latter two hoops and a cage.He played with a cage and a bell; it was more cheerful, not to saynoisy.
Of course all Bicester found occasion to pass through the Close andsee this great sight, while every window in the precincts was raised,that the denizens thereof might hear the tap, tap of the sacrilegiousmallet. The Cathedral lawyer, urged to take some step, and wellknowing the strength of the enemy's position, was fairly nonplussed.But while he pondered, with a certain grim amusement, over Mr.Swainson's crotchet, which did not present itself to his legal mind inso dreadful a light as it did to the mind clerical, some unknownperson took action, and made it war to the knife.
"Who did it?" Bicester asked loudly when it awoke one morning, to findMr. Swainson in a state of mind which seemed imperatively to call fora padded room and a strait waistcoat. During the night some one hadthrown down the iron railing, taken up and broken his hoops, crushedhis bell, and snapped his pegs; all this in the neatest possiblemanner, and with no damage to the turf. War to the knife indeed! Mr.Swainson, like the famous Widdrington, would have fought upon hisstumps on such a provocation.
He expressed his opinion very hotly that this was the work of "thatarrogant priest," and he should smart for it. A clergyman in this kindof context becomes a priest. This is common knowledge.
The Dean said, if hints were to go for anything, that it was a more orless direct interposition of Providence.
Young Swainson said nothing.
The vergers followed his example, but smiled a good deal.
The Dean's lawyer said it was a very foolish act, whoever did it.
Mrs. Dean said she should like to give the man who did it fiveshillings. Perhaps her inclination mastered her.
The Dean's daughter sighed.
And Bicester said everything except what young Swainson said.
I have not mentioned the Dean's daughter before. It is the popularbelief that she was christened Sweet Clive Buxton, and if people aremistaken in this, and the name "Sweet" does not appear upon the highlyfavored register, what of that? It is but one proof the more of theutter and tremendous want of foresight of godfathers and godmothers.They send the future lounger in St. James's into the world handicappedwith the name of Joseph or Zachary, and dub the country curate Tom orJerry. No matter; Clive Buxton, whatever her name, could be nothingbut sweet. She was not tall nor yet short; she was just as tall andjust as short as she should have been, with a well-rounded figure andgrave carriage of the head. Her hair was wavy and brown, and sometimesit strayed over a white brow, on which a frown was so great a strangerthat its right of entry was barred by the Statute of Limitations.There were a few freckles, etherealized dimples, about her well-shapednose. But these charms grew upon one gradually; at first her suitorswere only conscious of her great gray wide-open eyes, so kind andfrank and trustful, and so wise withal, that they filled every youngman upon whom she turned them with a certainty of her purity andgoodness and lovableness, and sent him away with a frantic desire tomake her his wife without loss of time. With all this, she overflowedwith fun and happiness--except when she sighed--and she was justnineteen. Such was Sweet Cli
ve Buxton then. If her picture werepainted to-day, there would be this difference: she is older and morebeautiful.
To return to our plot. Bicester watched with bated breath to see whatMr. Swainson would do. No culprit was forthcoming, and it seemed as ifthe day was going against him. He made no sign; only the broken hoops,the cage and battered bell, so lately the instruments and insignia oftriumph, were cleared away and, at the ex-mayor's strenuous request,taken in charge by the police. Even the iron railing was removed. Theexcitement in the Close rose high. Once more the Cathedral vicinagewas undefined by lay appropriation, but the Dean knew Mr. Swainson toowell to rejoice. The ground was cleared, it is true, but only, as hewell foresaw, that it might be used for some mysterious operations, ofwhich the end and aim only--his own annoyance--were clear to him, andnot the means. What would Mr. Swainson do?
The strange unnatural calm lasted several days. The Cathedraldignitaries moved about in fear and trembling. At length one night thedwellers in the Close were aroused by a peculiar hammering. It wasfrequent, deep, and ominous, and came from the direction of Mr.Swainson's plot. To the nervous it seemed as the knocking of nailsinto an untimely coffin; to the guilty--and this was very near theCathedral--like the noise of a rising scaffold; to the brave and thosewith clear consciences, such as Clive Buxton, it more nearly resembledthe knocking a hoarding together. And indeed that was the very thingit was, and around Mr. Swainson's plot.
But what a hoarding! When the light of day discovered it to people'seyes, the Dean's fearful anticipations seemed slight to him, as theboy's vision who has dreamed he is about to be flogged in jail, andawakes to find his father standing over him with a strap. It was sounsightly, so gaunt, so unpainted, so terrible; the very stones of theCathedral seemed to blush a deeper red at discovering it, and theoldest houses to turn a darker purple. Had the Dean possessed thehundred tongues of Fame (which in Bicester possessed many more) andthe five hundred fingers of Briareus he could not hope to prevent theMarquis's visitors asking questions about _that_, or to divert theattention of the least curious American. He recognized the truth at aglance, and formed his plan. Many generals have formed it before; itwas--retreat. He sent out his butler to borrow a continental Bradshawfrom the club, and shut himself up in his study. The truly great mindis never overwhelmed.
The vergers alone inspected the monster unmoved. They eyed it withglances not only of curiosity, but of appreciative intelligence. Notso, however, later in the day. Then Mr. Swainson appeared, leading bya strong chain a brindled bull-dog, of the most ferocious descriptionand about sixty pounds weight. The animal contemplated the nearestverger with much satisfaction, and licked his chops: it might be atsome grateful memory. The verger, who was in a small way a student ofnatural history, pronounced it however a lick of anticipation, andappeared not a little disconcerted. Mr. Swainson entered with the dogby a small door at the corner, and came out again without him. Theother vergers then left.
Their coming and going was nothing to Mr. Swainson. It was enough forhim that he stood there the cynosure of every eye in the Close; evenMrs. Dean was watching him from a distant garret window. In slow andmeasured fashion he walked to the steps of his own house, and, takingfrom them a board he had previously placed there, returned to theentrance of his plot, now enclosed to the height of about ten feet bythis terrible hoarding. Above the door he carefully hung the board anddrew back a few feet to take in the effect. Mrs. Dean sent downhastily for her opera-glasses, but really there was no need of them.The legend in huge black letters on a white ground ran thus: "NoAdmittance! Beware of the Dog!!!" A smile of content crept slowly overMr. 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 readyto swear to it in any court of justice--he snapped his fingers at theDeanery. And the dog howled!
It was the first of many howls, for he was a dog of great width ofchest; and not even the surgeon of an insurance company, if he hadlived twenty-four hours in Bicester Close, would have found fault withhis lungs. Why he howled during the night, for it was not the time offull moon, became the burning question of each morning. That he joinedin the Cathedral services with a zest and discrimination whichrendered the organ almost superfluous, and drove the organist to theverge of resignation, was only to be expected. There was nothingstrange in that, nor in his rivalry of the Praecentor'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 somarked 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 thebreakfast-table. "You could not hear the benediction this morning! AndI 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 beexplained that the Marquis in Bicester ranks next to and littlebeneath Providence. But the Dean shook his head. He put no faith inthe power even of the Marquis to handle Mr. Swainson. "I will lay itbefore the Bishop, my dear," he said humbly. And then, indeed, Mrs.Dean knew that the iron had entered into his soul, and that the handof 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 patiencewith her daughter.
For Clive's sympathies were no longer to be trusted. She was not theSweet 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. Dutydemanded that she should be an ocean, into which her father and mothermight pour the streams of their indignation and meet with asympathizing floodtide, and lo! this unfeeling girl declined to makeherself useful in that way, and instead sent forth a "bore" of lightjesting that made little of the enemy's enormities and a trifle of hisoutrages. More, she showed herself for the first time disobedient; shealtogether refused to promise not to speak to King Pepin ifopportunity should serve, and, clever girl as she was, laughed herfather out of insisting upon it, and kissed her mother into being anot unwilling ally. A wise woman was her mother and clear-sighted; shesaw that Clive had a spirit, but no longer a heart of her own. Yet atsuch a time as this, when her husband was wringing his hands, Clive'sinsensibility to the family grievances tried Mrs. Dean sorely. It washard that the Canon's sleepless night, the Praecentor's peevishness,the singing man's influenza, and all the countless counts of theindictment against Mr. Swainson, should fail to awaken in the younglady's mind a tithe of the indignation shared by every other person atthe Deanery, from the Dean himself to the scullery maid. But then loveis 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 theday a time for the expression of strong feelings. At length the Deanmet his legal adviser in the Close--ay, and within a few feet of theobnoxious erection; he kept his back to it with ridiculous care, whilethey talked.
"We have come to something like a settlement at last," said the lawyerbriskly;--"confusion take the dog! I can hardly hear myself speak.--Weare to meet at the Chapter House at five, Mr. Dean, if that will suityou: Mr. Swainson, the Bishop, Canon Rowcliffe, and myself. I think heis 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 whispersomething to you. There is an action commenced against him forshutting up a road across one of his farms at Middleton, and it willbe fought stoutly. One suit at a time will be sufficient to satisfyeven Mr. Swainson."
"You don't say so? This is good news!" cried the Dean, withunmistakable 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 toproclaim that the dog knew his reign was menaced, and, likeSardanapalus, was determined to go out right royally. It was more thanthe Dean could stand. With an involuntary motion of his hands to hisears, 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 doso, the havoc is generally of a singularly wide-spread description.The meeting in the chapter-house proved stormy from the first. Whetherit was that the writ in the right-of-way case had not yet reached Mr.Swainson, and so he clung to his only split-straw, or that the Deanwas soured by want of sleep, or that the Bishop was not thoroughenough--whatever was the cause, the spirit of compromise was absent,and the discussion across the chapter-house table threatened to makematters worse and not better. Whether the Dean first called Mr.Swainson's enclosure the "toadstool of a night," or Mr. Swainson tookthe initiative by styling the Dean the "mushroom of a day" (the Deanwas not of old family), was a question afterwards much and hotlydebated in Bicester circles. Be that as it may, the high powers atlength rose from the table in dudgeon and much confusion.
There was behind the Dean at the end of the chapter-house a largewindow. It looked directly down upon what he, in the course of thediscussion, had more than once termed "The Profanation," and since theeventful day of Mr. Swainson's match at croquet it had been, by theDean's order, kept shuttered, to the intent that, when occupied in thechapterhouse, the Profanation might not be directly before his eyes.On this occasion the shutter was still closed; it may be that thisphenomenon had weakened Mr. Swainson's not over-robust resolves on theside of amity.
The Dean was a choleric man. As the party rose, he stepped to thisshutter and flung it back. He turned to the others and saidexcitedly--
"Look, sir; look, my Lord! Is that a sight becoming the threshold of acathedral? Is that a thing to be endured on consecrated ground?"
They stepped towards the window, a wide low-browed Tudor one, andlooked out. The Dean himself stood aside, grasping the shutter with ahand that shook with passion. He could see the others' faces. Heexpected little show of shame or contrition on that of Mr. Swainson,but he did wish to bring this hideous thing home to the Bishop, whohad 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 realityand be unmoved!
No, he certainly could not. Slowly, and as if reluctantly, hislordship's face changed; it broke into a smile that broadened andrippled wider and wider, second by second, as he looked. His colordeepened until he became almost purple! And Mr. Swainson? His face wasthe picture of horror: there could not be a doubt of that. Confusionand astonishment were stereotyped on every feature. The Dean could notbelieve his own eyes. He turned in perplexity to the lawyer, who waspeeping between the others' heads. His shoulders were shaking and hisface was puckered with laughter.
The Bishop stepped back. "Really, gentlemen, I think it is hardly fairof 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, andtheir laughter, if not loud, was deep. The Dean was immensely puzzled,confused, perplexed, wholly angry. He did at last what he should havedone at first, instead of striking an attitude with that shutter inhis hand. He looked through the window himself. It was dusty, and hewas somewhat near-sighted, but at length he saw; and this was what hesaw.
In the further corner of the ugly enclosure, a couple of loversbilling and cooing; about and around them Mr. Swainson's big dogperforming uncouth gambols. Bad enough this; but it was not all. Theunsuspicious couple were Frank Swainson and--the Dean's daughter.Frank's arm was round her, and as the Dean looked, he stooped andkissed her, and Clive gazed with her brave eyes full of love into hisand scarcely blushed.
When the Dean turned round he was alone.
Was it very wrong of them? There was nowhere else, since thismiserable fracas began, where, away from others' eyes, they couldsteal a kiss. But into Mr. Swainson's plot no window, save a shutteredone, could look; the door, too, was close to one of the side doors ofthe cathedral, and you could pop in and out again unseen, and as forthe big dog, Frank and Tiger were great friends. So if it was verywrong, it was very easy and very nice, and---_faciles descensusAverni_.
For one hour the Dean remained shut up in his study. At the end ofthat time he put on his hat and walked across the Close. He knocked atMr. Swainson's door, and, upon its being opened, went in, and did notcome out again for an hour and five minutes by Mrs. Canon Rowcliffe'swatch. I have not the slightest idea of what passed there. Morethan two thousand different and distinct accounts of the interviewwere current next day in Bicester, but no one, and I have examinedthem all with care, seems to me to account for the undoubtedresults:--Imprimis, the disappearance next day from Mr. Swainson'splot of the famous hoarding, which was not even replaced by the oldiron railing. Secondly, the marriage six weeks later of King Pepin andSweet Clive.