CHAPTER XXXV.

The Bishop at Marlowe.

So he laboured in favour of his hypothesis with an uneasy sort of success; but, for a few seconds, on one sore point of his heart had there been a pressure, new, utterly agonising, and there remained the sense of contusion.

The General took his hat, and came and walked off briskly into the city a long way, thinking he had business; but when he reached the office, preferring another day--wishing to be back at Marlowe--wishing to see Varbarriere--longing to know the worst.

At last he turned into a city coffee-house, and wrote a reply on a quarto sheet of letter-paper to Monsieur Varbarriere. He was minded first to treat the whole thing with a well-bred contempt, and simply to mention that as he expected soon to be at Marlowe, he would not give Monsieur Varbarriere the trouble of making an appointment elsewhere.

But, seated in his box, he read Monsieur Varbarriere's short letter over again before committing himself, and it struck him that it was _not_ an intimation to be trifled with--it had a certain gravity which did not lose its force by frequent reading. The gentleman himself, too--reserved, shrewd, with an odd mixture of the unctuous and the sardonic--his recollection of this person, the writer, came unpleasantly in aid of the serious impression which his letter was calculated to make; and he read again--

"I have certain circumstances to lay before you which nearly affect your honour."

The words smote his heart again with a tremendous augury; somehow they would not quite fit his hypothesis about the horse, but it might be something else. Was there any lady who might conceive herself jilted? Who could guess what it might be?

Jennie's letter he read then again in his box, with the smell of beef-steaks, the glitter of pewter pots, and the tread of waiters about him.

Yes, it was--he defied the devil himself to question it--an affectionate, loving, grateful letter. And Lady Alice had gone to Marlowe, and was staying there--Lady Alice Redcliffe, that stiff, austere duenna--Jane's kinswoman. He was glad of it, and often thinking of it. But, no--oh! no--it could not possibly refer to Jane: upon that point he had perfectly made up his mind.

Well, with his pen between his fingers, he considered when he could go, and where he should meet this vulgar Frenchman. He could not leave London to-morrow, nor next day, and the day following he had to give evidence on the question of compensation to that native prince, and so on: so at last he wrote, naming the nearest day he could command, and requesting, in a postscript which he opened the letter to add, that Monsieur Varbarriere would be so very good as to let him know a little more distinctly to what specific subject his letter referred, as he had in vain taxed his recollection for the slightest clue to his meaning; and although he was perfectly satisfied that he could not have the smallest difficulty in clearing up anything that could possibly be alleged against him as a soldier or a gentleman--having, he thanked Heaven, accomplished his career with honour--he yet could not feel quite comfortable until he heard something more explicit.

As the General, with this letter in his pocket, was hurrying to the post-office, the party at Marlowe were admiring a glorious sunset, and Monsieur Varbarriere was describing to Lady Jane Lennox some gorgeous effects of sunlight which he had witnessed from Lisbon on the horizon of the Atlantic.

The Bishop had already arrived, and was in his dressing-room, and Dives was more silent and thoughtful than usual.

Yes, the Bishop had arrived. He was venerable, dignified, dapper, with, for his time of life, a wonderfully shapely leg in his black silk stocking. There was in his manner and tones that suavity which reminds one at the same time of heaven and the House of Lords. He did not laugh. He smiled and bowed sometimes. There was a classical flavour in his conversation with gentlemen, and he sometimes conversed with ladies, his leg crossed horizontally, the ankle resting on his knee, while he mildly stroked the shapely limb I have mentioned, and murmured well-bred Christianity, to which, as well as to his secular narratives, the ladies listened respectfully.

Don't suppose he was a hypocrite or a Pharisee. He was as honest as most men, and better than many Christians. He was a bachelor, and wealthy; but if he had amassed a good deal of public money, he had also displayed a good deal of public spirit, and had done many princely and even some kind actions. His family were not presentable, making a livelihood by unmentionable practices, such as shop-keeping and the like. Still he cut them with moderation, having maintained affable though clandestine relations with his two maiden aunts, who lived and died in Thames Street, and having twice assisted a nephew, though he declined seeing him, who was a skipper of a Russian brig.

He was a little High-Church. But though a disciplinarian in ecclesiastical matters, and with notions about self-mortification, his rule as master of the great school he had once governed had been kindly and popular as well as firm. I do not know exactly what interest got him his bishopric. Perhaps it was his reputation only; and that he was thinking of duty, and his fasts, and waked in his cell one morning with a mitre on instead of his nightcap. The Trappist, mayhap, in digging his grave had lighted on a pot of gold.

"I had no idea," exclaimed Miss Blunket, when the Bishop's apron and silk stockings had moved with the Rev. Dives Marlowe to the opposite extremity of the drawing-room, where the attentive Rector was soon deep in demonstrations, which evidently interested the right reverend prelate much, drawn from some manuscript notes of an ancestor of Dives's who had filled that see, which had long known him no more, and where he had been sharp in his day in looking up obscure rights and neglected revenues.

"I had no idea the Bishop was so young; he's by _no means_ an old-looking man; and so very admirable a prelate--is not he?"

"He has neglected one of St. Paul's conditions though," said Sir Jekyl; "but you will not think the worse of him for that. It may be mended, you know."

"What's that?" inquired Miss Blunket.

"Why, he's not the husband of one wife."

"Nonsense, you wretch!" cried Miss Blunket, with a giggle, jerking a violet which she was twiddling between her fingers at the Baronet.

"He has written a great deal, has not he?" continued Miss Blunket. "His tract on mortification has gone to fifteen thousand copies, I see by the newspaper."

"I wonder he has never married," interposed Lady Blunket, drowsily, with her usual attention to the context.

"I wonder he never tried it as a species of mortification," suggested Sir Jekyl.

"You horrid Vandal! Do you hear him, mamma?" exclaimed Miss Blunket.

Lady Blunket rather testily--for she neither heard nor understood very well, and her daughter's voice was shrill--asked--

"_What_ is it? You are always making mountains of molehills, my dear, and _startling_ one."

Old Lady Alice Redcliffe's entrance at this moment made a diversion. She entered, tall, grey, and shaky, leaning on the arm of pretty Beatrix, and was encountered near the door by the right reverend prelate, who greeted her with a dignified and apostolic gallantry, which contrasted finely with Sir Jekyl's jaunty and hilarious salutation.

The Bishop was very much changed since she had seen him last. He, no doubt, thought the same of her. Neither intimated this little reflection to the other. Each estimated, with something of wonder and pity, the other's decay, and neither appropriated the lesson.

"I dare say you think me very much altered," said Lady Alice, so soon as she had made herself comfortable on the ottoman.

"I was about putting the same inquiry of myself, Lady Alice; but, alas! why should we? 'Never continueth in one stay,' you know; change is the universal law, and the greatest, last."

The excellent prelate delivered this _ex cathedrâ_, as an immortal to a mortal. It was his duty to impress old Lady Alice, and he courteously included himself, being a modest priest, who talked of sin and death as if bishops were equally subject to them with other men.