Books: Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich
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Leacock, Stephen, 1869 1944 >> Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich
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Norah, of course, thought Mr. Spillikins a wonderful
player. She was glad--in fact, it suited them both--when
he beat her six to nothing. She didn't know and didn't
care that there was no one else in the world that Mr.
Spillikins could beat like that. Once he even said to
her.
"By Gad! you don't play half a bad game, you know. I
think you know, with practice you'd come on quite a lot."
After that the games were understood to be more or less
in the form of lessons, which put Mr. Spillikins on a
pedestal of superiority, and allowed any bad strokes on
his part to be viewed as a form of indulgence.
Also, as the tennis was viewed in this light, it was
Norah's part to pick up the balls at the net and throw
them back to Mr. Spillikins. He let her do this, not from
rudeness, for it wasn't in him, but because in such a
primeval place as Castel Casteggio the natural primitive
relation of the sexes is bound to reassert itself.
But of love Mr. Spillikins never thought. He had viewed
it so eagerly and so often from a distance that when it
stood here modestly at his very elbow he did not recognize
its presence. His mind had been fashioned, as it were,
to connect love with something stunning and sensational,
with Easter hats and harem skirts and the luxurious
consciousness of the unattainable.
Even at that, there is no knowing what might have happened.
Tennis, in the chequered light of sun and shadow cast by
summer leaves, is a dangerous game. There came a day when
they were standing one each side of the net and Mr.
Spillikins was explaining to Norah the proper way to hold
a racquet so as to be able to give those magnificent
backhand sweeps of his, by which he generally drove the
ball halfway to the lake; and explaining this involved
putting his hand right over Norah's on the handle of the
racquet, so that for just half a second her hand was
clasped tight in his; and if that half-second had been
lengthened out into a whole second it is quite possible
that what was already subconscious in his mind would have
broken its way triumphantly to the surface, and Norah's
hand would have stayed in his--how willingly--! for the
rest of their two lives.
But just at that moment Mr. Spillikins looked up, and he
said in quite an altered tone.
"By Jove! who's that awfully good-looking woman getting
out of the motor?"
And their hands unclasped. Norah looked over towards the
house and said:
"Why, it's Mrs. Everleigh. I thought she wasn't coming
for another week."
"I say," said Mr. Spillikins, straining his short sight
to the uttermost, "what perfectly wonderful golden hair,
eh?" "Why, it's--" Norah began, and then she stopped. It
didn't seem right to explain that Mrs. Everleigh's hair
was dyed. "And who's that tall chap standing beside
her?" said Mr. Spillikins.
"I think it's Captain Cormorant, but I don't think he's
going to stay. He's only brought her up in the motor from
town." "By Jove, how good of him!" said Spillikins; and
this sentiment in regard to Captain Cormorant, though
he didn't know it, was to become a keynote of his existence.
"I didn't know she was coming so soon," said Norah, and
there was weariness already in her heart. Certainly she
didn't know it; still less did she know, or anyone else,
that the reason of Mrs. Everleigh's coming was because
Mr. Spillikins was there. She came with a set purpose,
and she sent Captain Cormorant directly back in the motor
because she didn't want him on the premises.
"Oughtn't we to go up to the house?" said Norah.
"All right," said Mr. Spillikins with great alacrity,
"let's go."
* * * * * * *
Now as this story began with the information that Mrs.
Everleigh is at present Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins, there
is no need to pursue in detail the stages of Mr.
Spillikins's wooing. Its course was swift and happy. Mr.
Spillikins, having seen the back of Mrs. Everleigh's
head, had decided instantly that she was the most beautiful
woman in the world; and that impression is not easily
corrected in the half-light of a shaded drawing-room;
nor across a dinner-table lighted only with candles with
deep red shades; nor even in the daytime through a veil.
In any case, it is only fair to state that if Mrs.
Everleigh was not and is not a singularly beautiful woman,
Mr. Spillikins still doesn't know it. And in point of
attraction the homage of such experts as Captain Cormorant
and Lieutenant Hawk speaks for itself.
So the course of Mr. Spillikins's love, for love it must
have been, ran swiftly to its goal. Each stage of it was
duly marked by his comments to Norah.
"She _is_ a splendid woman," he said, "so sympathetic. She
always seems to know just what one's going to say."
So she did, for she was making him say it.
"By Jove!" he said a day later, "Mrs. Everleigh's an
awfully fine woman, isn't she? I was telling her about
my having been in the oil business for a little while,
and she thinks that I'd really be awfully good in money
things. She said she wished she had me to manage her
money for her."
This also was quite true, except that Mrs. Everleigh had
not made it quite clear that the management of her money
was of the form generally known as deficit financing. In
fact, her money was, very crudely stated, nonexistent,
and it needed a lot of management.
A day or two later Mr. Spillikins was saying, "I think
Mrs. Everleigh must have had great sorrow, don't you?
Yesterday she was showing me a photograph of her little
boy--she has a little boy you know--"
"Yes, I know," said Norah. She didn't add that she knew
that Mrs. Everleigh had four.
"--and she was saying how awfully rough it is having him
always away from her at Dr. Something's academy where he
is."
And very soon after that Mr. Spillikins was saying, with
quite a quaver in his voice,
"By Jove! yes, I'm awfully lucky; I never thought for a
moment that she'd have me, you know--a woman like her,
with so much attention and everything. I can't imagine
what she sees in me."
Which was just as well.
And then Mr. Spillikins checked himself, for he
noticed--this was on the verandah in the morning--that
Norah had a hat and jacket on and that the motor was
rolling towards the door.
"I say," he said, "are you going away?"
"Yes, didn't you know?" Norah said. "I thought you heard
them speaking of it at dinner last night. I have to go
home; father's alone, you know."
"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," said Mr. Spillikins; "we shan't
have any more tennis."
"Goodbye," said Norah, and as she said it and put out
her hand there were tears brimming up into her eyes. But
Mr. Spillikins, being short of sight, didn't see them.
"Goodbye," he said.
Then as the motor carried her away he stood for a moment
in a sort of reverie. Perhaps certain things that might
have been rose unformed and inarticulate before his mind.
And then, a voice called from the drawing-room within,
in a measured and assured tone,
"Peter, darling, where are you?"
"Coming," cried Mr. Spillikins, and he came.
* * * * * * *
On the second day of the engagement Mrs. Everleigh showed
to Peter a little photograph in a brooch.
"This is Gib, my second little boy," she said.
Mr. Spillikins started to say, "I didn't know--" and then
checked himself and said, "By Gad! what a fine-looking
little chap, eh? I'm awfully fond of boys."
"Dear little fellow, isn't he?" said Mrs. Everleigh.
"He's really rather taller than that now, because this
picture was taken a little while ago."
And the next day she said, "This is Willie, my third
boy," and on the day after that she said, "This is Sib,
my youngest boy; I'm sure you'll love him."
"I'm sure I shall," said Mr. Spillikins. He loved him
already for being the youngest.
* * * * * * *
And so in the fulness of time--nor was it so very full
either, in fact, only about five weeks--Peter Spillikins
and Mrs. Everleigh were married in St. Asaph's Church on
Plutoria Avenue. And the wedding was one of the most
beautiful and sumptuous of the weddings of the September
season. There were flowers, and bridesmaids in long veils,
and tall ushers in frock-coats, and awnings at the church
door, and strings of motors with wedding-favours on
imported chauffeurs, and all that goes to invest marriage
on Plutoria Avenue with its peculiar sacredness. The face
of the young rector, Mr. Fareforth Furlong, wore the
added saintliness that springs from a five-hundred dollar
fee. The whole town was there, or at least everybody that
was anybody; and if there was one person absent, one who
sat by herself in the darkened drawing-room of a dull
little house on a shabby street, who knew or cared?
So after the ceremony the happy couple--for were they
not so?--left for New York. There they spent their
honeymoon. They had thought of going--it was Mr.
Spillikins's idea--to the coast of Maine. But Mrs.
Everleigh-Spillikins said that New York was much nicer,
so restful, whereas, as everyone knows, the coast of
Maine is frightfully noisy.
Moreover, it so happened that before the
Everleigh-Spillikinses had been more than four or five
days in New York the ship of Captain Cormorant dropped
anchor in the Hudson; and when the anchor of that ship
was once down it generally stayed there. So the captain
was able to take the Everleigh-Spillikinses about in New
York, and to give a tea for Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins
on the deck of his vessel so that she might meet the
officers, and another tea in a private room of a restaurant
on Fifth Avenue so that she might meet no one but himself.
And at this tea Captain Cormorant said, among other
things, "Did he kick up rough at all when you told him
about the money?"
And Mrs. Everleigh, now Mrs. Everleigh-Spillikins, said,
"Not he! I think he is actually pleased to know that I
haven't any. Do you know, Arthur, he's really an awfully
good fellow," and as she said it she moved her hand away
from under Captain Cormorant's on the tea-table.
"I say," said the Captain, "don't get sentimental over
him."
* * * * * * *
So that is how it is that the Everleigh-Spillikinses came
to reside on Plutoria Avenue in a beautiful stone house,
with a billiard-room in an extension on the second floor.
Through the windows of it one can almost hear the click
of the billiard balls, and a voice saying, "Hold on,
father, you had your shot."
CHAPTER SIX: The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St. Osoph
The church of St. Asaph, more properly call St. Asaph's
in the Fields, stands among the elm trees of Plutoria
Avenue opposite the university, its tall spire pointing
to the blue sky. Its rector is fond of saying that it
seems to him to point, as it were, a warning against the
sins of a commercial age. More particularly does he say
this in his Lenten services at noonday, when the businessmen
sit in front of him in rows, their bald heads uncovered
and their faces stamped with contrition as they think of
mergers that they should have made, and real estate that
they failed to buy for lack of faith.
The ground on which St. Asaph's stands is worth seven
dollars and a half a foot. The mortgagees, as they kneel
in prayer in their long frock-coats, feel that they have
built upon a rock. It is a beautifully appointed church.
There are windows with priceless stained glass that were
imported from Normandy, the rector himself swearing out
the invoices to save the congregation the grievous burden
of the customs duty. There is a pipe organ in the transept
that cost ten thousand dollars to install. The
debenture-holders, as they join in the morning anthem,
love to hear the dulcet notes of the great organ and to
reflect that it is as good as new. Just behind the church
is St. Asaph's Sunday School, with a ten-thousand dollar
mortgage of its own. And below that again on the side
street, is the building of the Young Men's Guild with a
bowling-alley and a swimming-bath deep enough to drown
two young men at a time, and a billiard-room with seven
tables. It is the rector's boast that with a Guild House
such as that there is no need for any young man of the
congregation to frequent a saloon. Nor is there.
And on Sunday mornings, when the great organ plays, and
the mortgagees and the bond-holders and the
debenture-holders and the Sunday school teachers and the
billiard-markers all lift up their voices together, there
is emitted from St. Asaph's a volume of praise that is
practically as fine and effective as paid professional
work.
St. Asaph's is episcopal. As a consequence it has in it
and about it all those things which go to make up the
episcopal church--brass tablets let into its walls,
blackbirds singing in its elm trees, parishioners who
dine at eight o'clock, and a rector who wears a little
crucifix and dances the tango.
On the other hand, there stands upon the same street,
not a hundred yards away, the rival church of St.
Osoph--presbyterian down to its very foundations in
bed-rock, thirty feet below the level of the avenue. It
has a short, squat tower--and a low roof, and its narrow
windows are glazed with frosted glass. It has dark spruce
trees instead of elms, crows instead of blackbirds, and
a gloomy minister with a shovel hat who lectures on
philosophy on week-days at the university. He loves to
think that his congregation are made of the lowly and
the meek in spirit, and to reflect that, lowly and meek
as they are, there are men among them that could buy out
half the congregation of St. Asaph's.
St. Osoph's is only presbyterian in a special sense. It
is, in fact, too presbyterian to be any longer connected
with any other body whatsoever. It seceded some forty
years ago from the original body to which it belonged,
and later on, with three other churches, it seceded from
the group of seceding congregations. Still later it fell
into a difference with the three other churches on the
question of eternal punishment, the word "eternal" not
appearing to the elders of St. Osoph's to designate a
sufficiently long period. The dispute ended in a secession
which left the church of St. Osoph practically isolated
in a world of sin whose approaching fate it neither denied
nor deplored.
In one respect the rival churches of Plutoria Avenue had
had a similar history. Each of them had moved up by
successive stages from the lower and poorer parts of the
city. Forty years ago St. Asaph's had been nothing more
than a little frame church with a tin spire, away in the
west of the slums, and St. Osoph's a square, diminutive
building away in the east. But the site of St. Asaph's
had been bought by a brewing company, and the trustees,
shrewd men of business, themselves rising into wealth,
had rebuilt it right in the track of the advancing tide
of a real estate boom. The elders of St. Osoph, quiet
men, but illumined by an inner light, had followed suit
and moved their church right against the side of an
expanding distillery. Thus both the churches, as decade
followed decade, made their way up the slope of the City
till St. Asaph's was presently gloriously expropriated
by the street railway company, and planted its spire in
triumph on Plutoria Avenue itself. But St. Osoph's
followed. With each change of site it moved nearer and
nearer to St. Asaph's. Its elders were shrewd men. With
each move of their church they took careful thought in
the rebuilding. In the manufacturing district it was
built with sixteen windows on each side and was converted
at a huge profit into a bicycle factory. On the residential
street it was made long and deep and was sold to a
moving-picture company without the alteration of so much
as a pew. As a last step a syndicate, formed among the
members of the congregation themselves, bought ground on
Plutoria Avenue, and sublet it to themselves as a site
for the church, at a nominal interest of five per cent
per annum, payable nominally every three months and
secured by a nominal mortgage.
As the two churches moved, their congregations, or at
least all that was best of them--such members as were
sharing in the rising fortunes of the City--moved also,
and now for some six or seven years the two churches and
the two congregations had confronted one another among
the elm trees of the Avenue opposite to the university.
But at this point the fortunes of the churches had
diverged. St. Asaph's was a brilliant success; St. Osoph's
was a failure. Even its own trustees couldn't deny it.
At a time when St. Asaph's was not only paying its interest
but showing a handsome surplus on everything it undertook,
the church of St. Osoph was moving steadily backwards.
There was no doubt, of course, as to the cause. Everybody
knew it. It was simply a question of men, and, as everybody
said, one had only to compare the two men conducting the
churches to see why one succeeded and the other failed.
The Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong of St. Asaph's was
a man who threw his whole energy into his parish work.
The subtleties of theological controversy he left to
minds less active than his own. His creed was one of
works rather than of words, and whatever he was doing he
did it with his whole heart. Whether he was lunching at
the Mausoleum Club with one of his church wardens, or
playing the flute--which he played as only the episcopal
clergy can play it--accompanied on the harp by one of
the fairest of the ladies of his choir, or whether he
was dancing the new episcopal tango with the younger
daughters of the elder parishioners, he threw himself
into it with all his might. He could drink tea more
gracefully and play tennis better than any clergyman on
this side of the Atlantic. He could stand beside the
white stone font of St. Asaph's in his long white surplice
holding a white-robed infant, worth half a million dollars,
looking as beautifully innocent as the child itself, and
drawing from every matron of the congregation with
unmarried daughters the despairing cry, "What a pity that
he has no children of his own!"
Equally sound was his theology. No man was known to preach
shorter sermons or to explain away the book of Genesis
more agreeably than the rector of St. Asaph's; and if he
found it necessary to refer to the Deity he did so under
the name of Jehovah or Jah, or even Yaweh in a manner
calculated not to hurt the sensitiveness of any of the
parishioners. People who would shudder at brutal talk of
the older fashion about the wrath of God listened with
well-bred interest to a sermon on the personal
characteristics of Jah. In the same way Mr. Furlong always
referred to the devil, not as Satan but as Su or Swa,
which took all the sting out of him. Beelzebub he spoke
of as Behel-Zawbab, which rendered him perfectly harmless.
The Garden of Eden he spoke of as the Paradeisos, which
explained it entirely; the flood as the Diluvium, which
cleared it up completely; and Jonah he named, after the
correct fashion Jon Nah, which put the whole situation
(his being swallowed by Baloo or the Great Lizard) on a
perfectly satisfactory footing. Hell itself was spoken
of as She-ol, and it appeared that it was not a place of
burning, but rather of what one might describe as moral
torment. This settled She-ol once and for all: nobody
minds moral torment. In short, there was nothing in the
theological system of Mr. Furlong that need have occasioned
in any of his congregation a moment's discomfort.
There could be no greater contrast with Mr. Fareforth
Furlong than the minister of St. Osoph's, the Rev. Dr.
McTeague, who was also honorary professor of philosophy
at the university. The one was young, the other was old;
the one could dance the other could not; the one moved
about at church picnics and lawn teas among a bevy of
disciples in pink and blue sashes; the other moped around
under the trees of the university campus with blinking
eyes that saw nothing and an abstracted mind that had
spent fifty years in trying to reconcile Hegel with St.
Paul, and was still busy with it. Mr. Furlong went forward
with the times; Dr. McTeague slid quietly backwards with
the centuries.
Dr. McTeague was a failure, and all his congregation knew
it. "He is not up to date," they said. That was his
crowning sin. "He don't go forward any," said the business
members of the congregation. "That old man believes just
exactly the same sort of stuff now that he did forty
years ago. What's more, he preaches it. You can't run a
church that way, can you?"
His trustees had done their best to meet the difficulty.
They had offered Dr. McTeague a two-years' vacation to
go and see the Holy Land. He refused; he said he could
picture it. They reduced his salary by fifty per cent;
he never noticed it. They offered him an assistant; but
he shook his head, saying that he didn't know where he
could find a man to do just the work that he was doing.
Meantime he mooned about among the trees concocting a
mixture of St. Paul with Hegel, three parts to one, for
his Sunday sermon, and one part to three for his Monday
lecture.
No doubt it was his dual function that was to blame for
his failure. And this, perhaps, was the fault of Dr.
Boomer, the president of the university. Dr. Boomer, like
all university presidents of today, belonged to the
presbyterian church; or rather, to state it more correctly,
he included presbyterianism within himself. He was of
course, a member of the board of management of St. Osoph's
and it was he who had urged, very strongly, the appointment
of Dr. McTeague, then senior professor of philosophy, as
minister.
"A saintly man," he said, "the very man for the post. If
you should ask me whether he is entirely at home as a
professor of philosophy on our staff at the university,
I should be compelled to say no. We are forced to admit
that as a lecturer he does not meet our views. He appears
to find it difficult to keep religion out of his teaching.
In fact, his lectures are suffused with a rather dangerous
attempt at moral teaching which is apt to contaminate
our students. But in the Church I should imagine that
would be, if anything, an advantage. Indeed, if you were
to come to me and say, 'Boomer, we wish to appoint Dr.
McTeague as our minister,' I should say, quite frankly,
'Take him.'"
So Dr. McTeague had been appointed. Then, to the surprise
of everybody he refused to give up his lectures in
philosophy. He said he felt a call to give them. The
salary, he said, was of no consequence. He wrote to Mr.
Furlong senior (the father of the episcopal rector and
honorary treasurer of the Plutoria University) and stated
that he proposed to give his lectures for nothing. The
trustees of the college protested; they urged that the
case might set a dangerous precedent which other professors
might follow. While fully admitting that Dr. McTeague's
lectures were well worth giving for nothing, they begged
him to reconsider his offer. But he refused; and from
that day on, in spite of all offers that he should retire
on double his salary, that he should visit the Holy Land,
or Syria, or Armenia, where the dreadful massacres of
Christians were taking place, Dr. McTeague clung to his
post with a tenacity worthy of the best traditions of
Scotland. His only internal perplexity was that he didn't
see how, when the time came for him to die, twenty or
thirty years hence, they would ever be able to replace
him. Such was the situation of the two churches on a
certain beautiful morning in June, when an unforeseen
event altered entirely the current of their fortunes.
* * * * * * *
"No, thank you, Juliana," said the young rector to his
sister across the breakfast table--and there was something
as near to bitterness in his look as his saintly,
smooth-shaven face was capable of reflecting--"no, thank
you, no more porridge. Prunes? no, no, thank you; I don't
think I care for any. And, by the way," he added, "don't
bother to keep any lunch for me. I have a great deal of
business--that is, of work in the parish--to see to, and
I must just find time to get a bite of something to eat
when and where I can."
In his own mind he was resolving that the place should
be the Mausoleum Club and the time just as soon as the
head waiter would serve him.
After which the Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong bowed
his head for a moment in a short, silent blessing--the
one prescribed by the episcopal church in America for a
breakfast of porridge and prunes.
It was their first breakfast together, and it spoke
volumes to the rector. He knew what it implied. It stood
for his elder sister Juliana's views on the need of
personal sacrifice as a means of grace. The rector sighed
as he rose. He had never missed his younger sister
Philippa, now married and departed, so keenly. Philippa
had had opinions of her own on bacon and eggs and on lamb
chops with watercress as a means of stimulating the soul.
But Juliana was different. The rector understood now
exactly why it was that his father had exclaimed, on the
news of Philippa's engagement, without a second's
hesitation, "Then, of course, Juliana must live with you!
Nonsense, my dear boy, nonsense! It's my duty to spare
her to you. After all, I can always eat at the club; they
can give me a bite of something or other, surely. To a
man of my age, Edward, food is really of no consequence.
No, no; Juliana must move into the rectory at once."
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