CHAPTER IV.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 14, 22 January 1892, Page 21

CHAPTER IV.

"MY dear Edgar " (such a ridiculously little boy name for the Venerable Archdeacon), " how do you like the new Canon ?" Archdeacon Cudlip-Gaye was in his library, delving among bis books. He was lecturing on Dante that afternoon, and he rather resented Emma's appearance at this unusual hour. He drew down a very large Italian dictionary from the third shelf of one of the many bookcases which furnished the room with a liberal education, before replying ; then be said : "He will soon tone down." " Yon are charitable," said Emma. " I'm sum I hope he won't.'' " It's inevitable," said the Archdeacon, with the final deep drop in his voice which she knew. " Position always tones down a roan." " Then I hate position," said Emma. "If Con way Hope alters by one-tenth of a half-inch, I shall consider it was a great mistake to take him from his slum. " Witu the mistakes of people in power I have nothing to do," said the Archdeacon, and then he gave a hard, dry cough. This cough was alßo known to Emma. She shot a glance at him from her long slit eyes ; it was a comprehensive glance, embracing the whole man ; not an unkindly glance — rather amused. " No," she said, " there you are wise ; we have enough to do with our own mistakes, without taking the mistakes of others upon us. But — bnt— " The Archdeacon was making a marginal pencil note. " My dear Emma," he said, " the cream is bound to come to the top. If the man has power, the power will bt felt even in the atmosphere of the Abbey." Then the Archdeacon sank his head in his hands, and Emma left the room, not altogether extinguished, but just a little flat. " Ton know, Edgar," she said, turning round with the handle of the door in her hand, " that Canon Hope is a mapnetic man." It will be seen from this little conversation that there were no children in the household of the Cudlip Gayes. No children I Joyless announcement. No bright sweet faces to carry on the continuity of the two life-etoriea centred in the personalities of the CudlipGayes. Dismal corners must lurk in the house or the heart where the patter of a child's foot has never left its impress, where the rush of a renewal of old dead gaiety or lost innocence can never wake or itir, or parchance be recovered, in the smileß or tears or kisbes of a child. Children are to human nature what spring iB to Nature — the recovery of faith, hope, joy. Children are a playground in the souls of the old and the sad — a witness to the immortality of our race_ Children are a religion, a sacrament, a creed, in the heart of Christen. dom. Mrs Cudlip-Gaye lamented over it in her secret heart ; but the strong forces which would have given a crowning charm to her in the mingled joys of maternity must now flow out wholly in other directions. She began to worship intellect with as great a passion as the Greeks ; she also studied the men and women with whom she came in contact with a devouring curiosity, always hoping to discover some new America in this or that mind. There was a new America in the mind of this new Canon. She felt sure of it. His unconsciousness, his upward-held head, as much as to say, " I'm not Conway Hope, not a canon, but a real man, in sympathy with all that belongs to th« nature of man ; shrinking from nothing of its evil, because evil is the excess of good ; and in sympathy with that something which is more than man— that something which people define according to their knowledge of dual natures." Mrs Cudlip-Gaye was charmed with this new acquisition to the monotony of the Abbey set ; just as charmed as if a rare piece of statuary bad come direct from the Pope as a gift to th« Abbey, which denied bis authority and would have declined to place an image within its sacred walls. Conway Hope was a sort of giaven image already to Mrs CudlipGaye, but she didn't know it. We are not the best discerners of what constitutes our graven images, for by the time we have discovered, to our shame, that we have made them, they have ceased to be graven images. Our morality, therefore, is a very difficult standard to fix, and our congratulations and self -conquest are too often the trumpet blown before a " died its own death " sin. The drawing-room at the Archdeacon's was thrown open every Wednesday evening for the discussion of many matters outside what people call the pale of religion — at least to those whose religion is plucked from the tree called Orangt, and very sour sometimes are those fruit-bearing Orange-trees. The Archdeacon was in sympathy with a defeated Government. This was considered by the Abbey set "one of our dear Archdeacon's little eccentricities/ because, as Mrs Cadwallader said, we can't expect to feed our cows with straw and get milk, and that's what all government, except Tory government, meant to her— feeding on straw.

" I have always noticed Radicals look to hnngry," she had laid one day ; " all except our Archdeacon, bat Mn Cudlip-Gaye looks after that, of coarse." " It's hanger of Borne sort turns Radical," said Miss Clatterbeck, who ntver opposed Mrs Cadwallader ; " I don't believe in divine disconteat." " Divine humbug !" said Mrs Cadwallader, who was reputed to have that description of tongue which called a spade a spada. Mr 8 Cadwallader piqued herself on her honesty more than on her modesty. " I stand for truth " was her favourite way of commencing an attack. It would only have irritated Mrs Cadwallader's troth to convince her that troth requires no championship, beiog forced by laws of its own to eventually be proclaimed (.by sweeter voices than the Mrs Cadwalladers of creation) from the housetops. These reunions at the Archdeacon's were a coveted distinction : Mrs Cudlip-Gaye selected adaptable people, and the Archdeacon selected her subjects to be brought before the adaptable minds. " Without prejudice is, I believe, a business term," said Mr* Cudlip-Gaye ; "my guests most be without rredudice. I would as soon put bows in bonnets as prejudice on platforms." There was no doubt that the long, low drawing-room in the Close had formed many distinguished minds, raised the standard of an eager search after beauty, and given the interior vision wherewith to grasp it. The tongue of the slanderer was never heard ia that drawingroom. Somebody once commenced to pour some odious gossip into the ear of Mrs Cudlip-Gaye. A deep acquaintance with lofty classic literature will give anybody just as great a horror of gossip as of the reeking scent of onions. Mrs Cudlip-Gaye was seen to turn absolutely livid. She rose slowly, dropped the profoundest curtsy to her astonished visitor, and silently left the room. The experiment was never repeated. I don't think it wonld have been possible to a purely English woman to play hostess to such perfection aB Emma. There was that Polish great-grandmother to thank for the perfection of manner which was yet not manner, but the culminated, haaded-down, happy way of talking about nothing in particular, and bantering with a point which somehow never Btung. The Archdeacon, too, was a good host. He knew life from more points than that of a schoolmaster. Every year before his marriage he had travelled with a mind set on acquiring knowledge. He had a knocked -about mind, and was never afraid of his "gaiters." He was extremely agreeable to men— not at all so to women : the proof of that fact being his long bachelorhood, and the pass he had come to when Emma stepped in and took him. " My dear Edgar, do make yourself pleasant to Miss Clatterbeck," was the oft-repeated request to Emma. " It is impossible I should marry her," said the Archdeacon ; " it is only necessary a man should make himself pleasant to the woman he intends to marry. I gave yon a rose when I gave you myself ; then I ended. " Go on giving roses," said Emma ; " it is always graceful." " My dear 1" said the Archdeacon, and this time he really did look at the gaiters.