Читать книгу Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories - G. A. Birmingham - Страница 4

REALLY, Ronald," said Ethel Mendel, "your mother is very unreasonable. Just now, too, when we are having such a pleasant time."

She spoke to her husband, who was arranging a salmon cast in the smoking-room. The post had just arrived and she held an open letter in her hand. He glanced at it apprehensively. His mother was an old lady who made unreasonable demands of her children and usually carried through any scheme in which she was interested without regard for the feelings of other people.

"What is she at now?" he asked.

"She is sending a bishop here," said Mrs. Mendel. "And he is to stay a week."

"Good Heavens! We can't possibly have a bishop here. It—it wouldn't be decent."

The Mendels had taken a house in Connemara for the month of August, a house with some good fishing attached to it. Gilbert Hutchinson, a keen angler quite uninterested in bishops, was with them. Minnie, Ronald's youngest sister, had been admitted to the party as a companion for Mrs. Mendel.

"This is a most unsuitable place for any bishop," said Ronald, "and we are not at all the sort of people——"

Mrs. Mendel drew herself up.

"After all," she said, "we're not doing anything wrong. The apostles fished."

"But they didn't play bridge after dinner."

"We shall have to give up bridge while he's here. Your mother says he won't stay more than a week, and he may go away sooner."

Ronald referred to the letter which his wife handed to him.

"He wants," he said, "to see something of the west of Ireland while he's at home. At home! Where does he come from?"

"India, apparently. If you'd begun at the beginning of your mother's letter instead of the middle you'd have seen that at once."

"Then he's not a proper bishop, at all."

"Oh, yes, he is. He's a missionary bishop, and that's just the same as the ordinary kind, only worse; more severe, I mean."

"Minnie will have to stop smoking cigarettes in the drawing-room," said Ronald.

"Minnie is rather a difficulty. She's just the sort of girl who enjoys shocking people."

"She mustn't do it in my house," said Ronald. "I may not care for having bishops dumped down on me in this way, but while they're here they must be treated with proper respect. I'll speak to Minnie myself."

"Do. And, Ronald dear, before he comes I think you might lock up that novel you got the other day. I haven't read it, of course, but from what you told me I don't think——"

"There's nothing in the novel half so risqué as the things Minnie frequently says. I hope you'll make her understand "

"I thought you said you'd speak to her."

"I shall, about the smoking. The other warning will come better from you. When does the bishop arrive?"

"He may be here to-morrow," said Mrs. Mendel. "His plans appear to be rather unsettled. He is to drop in on us whenever he finds himself in this neighbourhood. Your mother says we're to have a room ready for him. Be sure to give Mr. Hutchinson a hint not to leave those sporting papers of his lying about. I wouldn't like the bishop to think we read them. They're—well, not very religious, are they, Ronald?"

"If I know anything of Gilbert Hutchinson he'll clear out of this before the bishop arrives. He's not what I call an irreligious man, but I don't think he could stand sitting down to dinner every night with a bishop."

Mr. Hutchinson acted up to his host's expectation. He recollected suddenly that he had an aunt in County Cork, and that it was his duty to pay her a visit while he was in Ireland. Minnie, on the other hand, expressed the greatest delight at the prospect of entertaining a bishop.

"There are one or two things I want you to be careful about," Ronald said to her. "When we have a bishop in the house——"

"Don't start lecturing me about the proper way to treat the clergy," said Minnie. "Bessie Langworthy, who is my greatest friend, happens to be married to a canon. I spent last Easter with them and lived for a fortnight in a cathedral close. What I don't know about the habits and tastes of Church dignitaries isn't worth mentioning."

"I suppose he'll want a sitting-room to himself," said Mrs. Mendel. "We shall have to turn your smoking-room into a study, Ronald."

"Sanctum is the proper word," said Minnie. "Bessie Langworthy's husband has a sanctum, not a study."

"I don't see," said Ronald, "how my smoking-room can be turned into a sanctuary without going to enormous expense."

"That remark," said Minnie, "shows how little you know about the clergy. A sanctum is as different as possible from a sanctuary. If you'd ever been inside Bessie Langworthy's husband's sanctum, you'd see the absurdity of what you say."

Mrs. Mendel interposed to save her husband's dignity.

"I hunted about the house this afternoon," she said, "and found a few books that we might put there for him. They were stacked away in the box-room, but I had them brought down and dusted. There are five volumes by a man called Paley, who seems to have been an archdeacon. I glanced into them and they looked all right. They are theology, aren't they, Ronald?"

"They won't do at all," said Minnie. "Bishops don't read books of that sort. What we want in the sanctum is a few novels of a rather—— You know the sort I mean, Ronald. I see that you have got 'On the Edge of a Precipice.' Now that would be the exact thing."

"Minnie," said Mrs. Mendel, "surely you haven't read that book! Ronald, I told you not to let it out of the smoking-room."

"Of course I've read it," said Minnie. "That's how I know the bishop will like it. Bessie Langworthy's busband, who is a canon——"

"I won't give that book to any bishop," said Ronald.

"I'm not asking you to force it on him," said Minnie. "I simply say that it should be left in the sanctum so that he can get it when he wants it. Bessie Langworthy's husband——"

"Bessie Langworthy's husband be hanged!"

"If you swear while the bishop's here, Ronald," said Minnie, "you'll shock him. I must also have a pound of tobacco for the sanctum; not cigars. Bishops don't smoke cigars. The reason is that it doesn't do for them to appear opulent, especially nowadays when people are so down on the Church. I'll have a box of my own cigarettes on the chimney- piece in case he doesn't care for a pipe."

"That reminds me," said Ronald, "that I can't have you smoking cigarettes all over the house while he's here."

"My dear Ronald! Don't be perfectly absurd. Bessie Langworthy's husband supplied me with cigarettes while I was there. Church dignitaries like women who smoke. It's a pleasant variety for them. Their own wives never do. By the way, is this bishop married?"

"Is he married?" said Ronald to his wife.

"Your mother doesn't say." She referred to the letter as she spoke. "Anyhow, his wife, if he has a wife, isn't with him."

"That's a comfort," said Minnie. "I could never have got on with a Mrs. Bishop. Now, if you two will excuse me, I'll go and give some instructions to the servants. There are a few things they mightn't be up to if they're not accustomed to bishops."

"I suppose," said Ronald, "that you know exactly how gaiters and aprons ought to be folded."

"Really Minnie," said Mrs. Mendel, "I think you'd better leave the servants to me."

"Certainly not," said Minnie. "You know no more about bishops than they do. You'd simply make a muddle, and what we want is to give the poor man a really pleasant time while he's with us."

"Ronald," said Mrs. Mendel a few minutes later, "I'm afraid that Minnie——"

Ronald lit a cigar gloomily.

"Your mother," she went on, "won't like the flippant way in which Minnie evidently means to treat the bishop. When she hears about it she'll blame us."

"I rather think," said Ronald, "that I'd better go down to Cork and pay a visit to Gilbert Hutchinson's aunt till this business is over."

"If only Minnie would do that! But of course she won't. She's enjoying herself."