Love's Logic and Other Stories/Prudence and the Bishop
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 neighborhood, 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 mama 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 mama 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 check-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'?"
"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 Crockfords 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 consideration. 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 some one taught Dick how to make a fly, for example; on the other hand lie what I may broadly term your inclinations and"
I woke 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?"
Prima 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 toward 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 parlor 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 around 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 vigor, and I delivered my message with as little rancor 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 parlor 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
All Heaven's with us, so we Prudence win:
If Fortune's hailed a goddess ours the sin!
"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
Celestial Wisdom calms the mind,
And makes the happiness she does not find.
"I call that pretty bad."
"Not much to the present point, anyhow," I agreed.
"I had another rime—and after all the rime's the difficulty. How about this?—
All Heaven's ours if Prudence we can gain.
Our silly hands build Fortune's empty fane!
"Really you fire me to emulation," I said. "I think I'll try my own hand at it
If Prudence loves, what other boon need I?
"Splendid!" he cried, puffing at his empty pipe.
Unless a bishop's palace by-and-by?
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-by!" 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-humor. 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.