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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"That," said Dr. Boomer very reverently, "is our real
loss, deep, irreparable. I suppose, indeed I am certain,
we shall never again see such a man in the pulpit of St.
Osoph's. Which reminds me," he added more briskly, "I
must ask the newspaper people to let it be known that
there will be service as usual the day after tomorrow,
and that Dr. McTeague's death will, of course, make no
difference--that is to say--I must see the newspaper
people at once."
* * * * * * *
That afternoon all the newspaper editors in the City were
busy getting their obituary notices ready for the demise
of Dr. McTeague.
"The death of Dr. McTeague," wrote the editor of the
_Commercial and Financial Undertone_, a paper which had
almost openly advocated the minister's dismissal for five
years back, "comes upon us as an irreparable loss. His
place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to fill. Whether
as a philosopher or a divine he cannot be replaced."
"We have no hesitation in saying," so wrote the editor
of the _Plutorian Times_, a three-cent morning paper, which
was able to take a broad or three-cent point of view of
men and things, "that the loss of Dr. McTeague will be
just as much felt in Europe as in America. To Germany
the news that the hand that penned 'McTeague's Shorter
Exposition of the Kantian Hypothesis' has ceased to write
will come with the shock of poignant anguish; while to
France--"
The editor left the article unfinished at that point.
After all, he was a ready writer, and he reflected that
there would be time enough before actually going to press
to consider from what particular angle the blow of
McTeague's death would strike down the people of France.
So ran in speech and in writing, during two or three
days, the requiem of Dr. McTeague.
Altogether there were more kind things said of him in
the three days during which he was taken for dead, than
in thirty years of his life--which seemed a pity.
And after it all, at the close of the third day, Dr.
McTeague feebly opened his eyes.
But when he opened them the world had already passed on,
and left him behind.
CHAPTER SEVEN: The Ministrations of the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing
"Well, then, gentlemen, I think we have all agreed upon
our man?"
Mr. Dick Overend looked around the table as he spoke at
the managing trustees of St. Osoph's church. They were
assembled in an upper committee room of the Mausoleum
Club. Their official place of meeting was in a board room
off the vestry of the church. But they had felt a draught
in it, some four years ago, which had wafted them over
to the club as their place of assembly. In the club there
were no draughts.
Mr. Dick Overend sat at the head of the table, his brother
George beside him, and Dr. Boomer at the foot. Beside
them were Mr. Boulder, Mr. Skinyer (of Skinyer and Beatem)
and the rest of the trustees.
"You are agreed, then, on the Reverend Uttermust
Dumfarthing?"
"Quite agreed," murmured several trustees together.
"A most remarkable man," said Dr. Boomer. "I heard him
preach in his present church. He gave utterance to thoughts
that I have myself been thinking for years. I never
listened to anything so sound or so scholarly."
"I heard him the night he preached in New York," said
Mr. Boulder. "He preached a sermon to the poor. He told
them they were no good. I never heard, outside of a Scotch
pulpit, such splendid invective."
"Is he Scotch?" said one of the trustees.
"Of Scotch parentage," said the university president. "I
believe he is one of the Dumfarthings of Dunfermline,
Dumfries."
Everybody said "Oh," and there was a pause.
"Is he married?" asked one of the trustees. "I understand,"
answered Dr. Boomer, "that he is a widower with one child,
a little girl."
"Does he make any conditions?"
"None whatever," said the chairman, consulting a letter
before him, "except that he is to have absolute control,
and in regard to salary. These two points settled, he
says, he places himself entirely in our hands."
"And the salary?" asked someone.
"Ten thousand dollars," said the chairman, "payable
quarterly in advance."
A chorus of approval went round the table. "Good,"
"Excellent," "A first-class man," muttered the trustees,
"just what we want."
"I am sure, gentlemen," said Mr. Dick Overend, voicing
the sentiments of everybody, "we do _not_ want a cheap man.
Several of the candidates whose names have been under
consideration here have been in many respects--in point
of religious qualification, let us say--most desirable
men. The name of Dr. McSkwirt, for example, has been
mentioned with great favour by several of the trustees.
But he's a cheap man. I feel we don't want him."
"What is Mr. Dumfarthing getting where he is?" asked Mr.
Boulder.
"Nine thousand nine hundred," said the chairman.
"And Dr. McSkwirt?"
"Fourteen hundred dollars."
"Well, that settles it!" exclaimed everybody with a burst
of enlightenment.
And so it was settled.
In fact, nothing could have been plainer.
"I suppose," said Mr. George Overend as they were about
to rise, "that we are quite justified in taking it for
granted that Dr. McTeague will never be able to resume
work?"
"Oh, absolutely for granted," said Dr. Boomer. "Poor
McTeague! I hear from Slyder that he was making desperate
efforts this morning to sit up in bed. His nurse with
difficulty prevented him."
"Is his power of speech gone?" asked Mr. Boulder.
"Practically so; in any case, Dr. Slyder insists on his
not using it. In fact, poor McTeague's mind is a wreck.
His nurse was telling me that this morning he was reaching
out his hand for the newspaper, and seemed to want to
read one of the editorials. It was quite pathetic,"
concluded Dr. Boomer, shaking his head.
So the whole matter was settled, and next day all the
town knew that St. Osoph's Church had extended a call to
the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing, and that he had accepted
it.
* * * * * * *
Within a few weeks of this date the Reverend Uttermust
Dumfarthing moved into the manse of St. Osoph's and
assumed his charge. And forthwith he became the sole
topic of conversation on Plutoria Avenue. "Have you seen
the new minister of St. Osoph's?" everybody asked. "Have
you been to hear Dr. Dumfarthing?" "Were you at St.
Osoph's Church on Sunday morning? Ah, you really should
go! most striking sermon I ever listened to."
The effect of him was absolute and instantaneous; there
was no doubt of it.
"My dear," said Mrs. Buncomhearst to one of her friends,
in describing how she had met him, "I never saw a more
striking man. Such power in his face! Mr. Boulder introduced
him to me on the avenue, and he hardly seemed to see me
at all, simply scowled! I was never so favourably impressed
with any man."
On his very first Sunday he preached to his congregation
on eternal punishment, leaning forward in his black gown
and shaking his fist at them. Dr. McTeague had never
shaken his fist in thirty years, and as for the Rev.
Fareforth Furlong, he was incapable of it.
But the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing told his congregation
that he was convinced that at least seventy per cent of
them were destined for eternal punishment; and he didn't
call it by that name, but labelled it simply and forcibly
"hell." The word had not been heard in any church in the
better part of the City for a generation. The congregation
was so swelled next Sunday that the minister raised the
percentage to eighty-five, and everybody went away
delighted. Young and old flocked to St. Osoph's. Before
a month had passed the congregation at the evening service
at St. Asaph's Church was so slender that the offertory,
as Mr. Furlong senior himself calculated, was scarcely
sufficient to pay the overhead charge of collecting it.
The presence of so many young men sitting in serried
files close to the front was the only feature of his
congregation that extorted from the Rev. Mr. Dumfarthing
something like approval.
"It is a joy to me to see," he remarked to several of
his trustees, "that there are in the City so many godly
young men, whatever the elders may be."
But there may have been a secondary cause at work, for
among the godly young men of Plutoria Avenue the topic
of conversation had not been, "Have you heard the new
presbyterian minister?" but, "Have you seen his daughter?
You haven't? Well, say!"
For it turned out that the "child" of Dr. Uttermust
Dumfarthing, so-called by the trustees, was the kind of
child that wears a little round hat, straight from Paris,
with an upright feather in it, and a silk dress in four
sections, and shoes with high heels that would have broken
the heart of John Calvin. Moreover, she had the distinction
of being the only person on Plutoria Avenue who was not
one whit afraid of the Reverend Uttermust Dumfarthing.
She even amused herself, in violation of all rules, by
attending evening service at St. Asaph's, where she sat
listening to the Reverend Edward, and feeling that she
had never heard anything so sensible in her life.
"I'm simply dying to meet your brother," she said to Mrs.
Tom Overend, otherwise Philippa; "he's such a complete
contrast with father." She knew no higher form of praise:
"Father's sermons are always so frightfully full of
religion."
And Philippa promised that meet him she should.
But whatever may have been the effect of the presence of
Catherine Dumfarthing, there is no doubt the greater part
of the changed situation was due to Dr. Dumfarthing
himself.
Everything he did was calculated to please. He preached
sermons to the rich and told them they were mere cobwebs,
and they liked it; he preached a special sermon to the
poor and warned them to be mighty careful; he gave a
series of weekly talks to workingmen, and knocked them
sideways; and in the Sunday School he gave the children
so fierce a talk on charity and the need of giving freely
and quickly, that such a stream of pennies and nickels
poured into Catherine Dumfarthing's Sunday School Fund
as hadn't been seen in the church in fifty years.
Nor was Mr. Dumfarthing different in his private walk of
life. He was heard to speak openly of the Overend brothers
as "men of wrath," and they were so pleased that they
repeated it to half the town. It was the best business
advertisement they had had for years.
Dr. Boomer was captivated with the man. "True scholarship,"
he murmured, as Dr. Dumfarthing poured undiluted Greek
and Hebrew from the pulpit, scorning to translate a word
of it. Under Dr. Boomer's charge the minister was taken
over the length and breadth of Plutoria University, and
reviled it from the foundations up.
"Our library," said the president, "two hundred thousand
volumes!"
"Aye," said the minister, "a powerful heap of rubbish,
I'll be bound!"
"The photograph of our last year's graduating class,"
said the president.
"A poor lot, to judge by the faces of them," said the
minister.
"This, Dr. Dumfarthing, is our new radiographic laboratory;
Mr. Spiff, our demonstrator, is preparing slides which, I
believe, actually show the movements of the atom itself,
do they not, Mr. Spiff?"
"Ah," said the minister, piercing Mr. Spiff from beneath
his dark brows, "it will not avail you, young man."
Dr. Boomer was delighted. "Poor McTeague," he said--"and
by the way, Boyster, I hear that McTeague is trying to
walk again; a great error, it shouldn't be allowed!--poor
McTeague knew nothing of science."
The students themselves shared in the enthusiasm, especially
after Dr. Dumfarthing had given them a Sunday afternoon
talk in which he showed that their studies were absolutely
futile. As soon as they knew this they went to work with
a vigour that put new life into the college.
* * * * * * *
Meantime the handsome face of the Reverend Edward Fareforth
Furlong began to wear a sad and weary look that had never
been seen on it before. He watched the congregation
drifting from St. Asaph's to St. Osoph's and was powerless
to prevent it. His sadness reached its climax one bright
afternoon in the late summer, when he noticed that even
his episcopal blackbirds were leaving his elms and moving
westward to the spruce trees of the manse.
He stood looking at them with melancholy on his face.
"Why, Edward," cried his sister, Philippa, as her motor
stopped beside him, "how doleful you look! Get into the
car and come out into the country for a ride. Let the
parish teas look after themselves for today."
Tom, Philippa's husband, was driving his own car--he was
rich enough to be able to--and seated with Philippa in
the car was an unknown person, as prettily dressed as
Philippa herself. To the rector she was presently introduced
as Miss Catherine Something--he didn't hear the rest of
it. Nor did he need to. It was quite plain that her
surname, whatever it was, was a very temporary and
transitory affair.
So they sped rapidly out of the City and away out into
the country, mile after mile, through cool, crisp air,
and among woods with the touch of autumn bright already
upon them, and with blue sky and great still clouds white
overhead. And the afternoon was so beautiful and so bright
that as they went along there was no talk about religion
at all! nor was there any mention of Mothers' Auxiliaries,
or Girls' Friendly Societies, nor any discussion of the
poor. It was too glorious a day. But they spoke instead
of the new dances, and whether they had come to stay, and
of such sensible topics as that. Then presently, as they
went on still further, Philippa leaned forwards and talked
to Tom over his shoulder and reminded him that this was
the very road to Castel Casteggio, and asked him if he
remembered coming up it with her to join the Newberry's
ever so long ago. Whatever it was that Tom answered it
is not recorded, but it is certain that it took so long
in the saying that the Reverend Edward talked in tete-a-tete
with Catherine for fifteen measured miles, and was unaware
that it was more than five minutes. Among other things
he said, and she agreed--or she said and he agreed--that
for the new dances it was necessary to have always one
and the same partner, and to keep that partner all the
time. And somehow simple sentiments of that sort, when
said direct into a pair of listening blue eyes behind a
purple motor veil, acquire an infinite significance.
Then, not much after that, say three or four minutes,
they were all of a sudden back in town again, running
along Plutoria Avenue, and to the rector's surprise the
motor was stopping outside the manse, and Catherine was
saying, "Oh, thank you ever so much, Philippa; it was
just heavenly!" which showed that the afternoon had had
its religious features after all. "What!" said the
rector's sister, as they moved off again, "didn't you
know? That's Catherine Dumfarthing!"
* * * * * * *
When the Rev. Fareforth Furlong arrived home at the
rectory he spent an hour or so in the deepest of deep
thought in an armchair in his study. Nor was it any ordinary
parish problem that he was revolving in his mind. He was
trying to think out some means by which his sister Juliana
might be induced to commit the sin of calling on the
daughter of a presbyterian minister.
The thing had to be represented as in some fashion or
other an act of self-denial, a form of mortification of
the flesh. Otherwise he knew Juliana would never do it.
But to call on Miss Catherine Dumfarthing seemed to him
such an altogether delightful and unspeakably blissful
process that he hardly knew how to approach the topic.
So when Juliana presently came home the rector could find
no better way of introducing the subject than by putting
it on the ground of Philippa's marriage to Miss
Dumfarthing's father's trustee's nephew.
"Juliana," he said, "don't you think that perhaps, on
account of Philippa and Tom, you ought--or at least it
might be best for you to call on Miss Dumfarthing?"
Juliana turned to her brother as he laid aside her bonnet
and her black gloves.
"I've just been there this afternoon," she said.
There was something as near to a blush on her face as
her brother had ever seen.
"But she was not there!" he said.
"No," answered Juliana, "but Mr. Dumfarthing was. I stayed
and talked some time with him, waiting for her."
The rector gave a sort of whistle, or rather that blowing
out of air which is the episcopal symbol for it.
"Didn't you find him pretty solemn?" he said.
"Solemn!" answered his sister. "Surely, Edward, a man in
such a calling as his ought to be solemn."
"I don't mean that exactly," said the rector; "I
mean--er--hard, bitter, so to speak."
"Edward!" exclaimed Juliana, "how can you speak so. Mr.
Dumfarthing hard! Mr. Dumfarthing bitter! Why, Edward,
the man is gentleness and kindness itself. I don't think
I ever met anyone so full of sympathy, of compassion with
suffering."
Juliana's face had flushed It was quite plain that she
saw things in the Reverend Uttermust Dumfarthing--as some
one woman does in every man--that no one else could see.
The Reverend Edward was abashed. "I wasn't thinking of
his character," he said. "I was thinking rather of his
doctrines. Wait till you have heard him preach."
Juliana flushed more deeply still. "I heard him last
Sunday evening," she said.
The rector was silent, and his sister, as if impelled to
speak, went on,
"And I don't see, Edward, how anyone could think him a
hard or bigoted man in his creed. He walked home with me
to the gate just now, and he was speaking of all the sin
in the world, and of how few, how very few people, can
be saved, and how many will have to be burned as worthless;
and he spoke so beautifully. He regrets it, Edward,
regrets it deeply. It is a real grief to him."
On which Juliana, half in anger, withdrew, and her brother
the rector sat back in his chair with smiles rippling
all over his saintly face. For he had been wondering
whether it would be possible, even remotely possible,
to get his sister to invite the Dumfarthings to high tea
at the rectory some day at six o'clock (evening dinner
was out of the question), and now he knew within himself
that the thing was as good as done.
* * * * * * *
While such things as these were happening and about to
happen, there were many others of the congregation of
St. Asaph's beside the rector to whom the growing situation
gave cause for serious perplexities. Indeed, all who were
interested in the church, the trustees and the mortgagees
and the underlying debenture-holders, were feeling anxious.
For some of them underlay the Sunday School, whose
scholars' offerings had declined forty per cent, and
others underlay the new organ, not yet paid for, while
others were lying deeper still beneath the ground site
of the church with seven dollars and a half a square foot
resting on them.
"I don't like it," said Mr. Lucullus Fyshe to Mr. Newberry
(they were both prominent members of the congregation).
"I don't like the look of things. I took up a block of
Furlong's bonds on his Guild building from what seemed
at the time the best of motives. The interest appeared
absolutely certain. Now it's a month overdue on the last
quarter. I feel alarmed."
"Neither do I like it," said Mr. Newberry, shaking his
head; "and I'm sorry for Fareforth Furlong. An excellent
fellow, Fyshe, excellent. I keep wondering Sunday after
Sunday, if there isn't something I can do to help him
out. One might do something further, perhaps, in the way
of new buildings or alterations. I have, in fact,
offered--by myself, I mean, and without other aid--to
dynamite out the front of his church, underpin it, and
put him in a Norman gateway; either that, or blast out
the back of it where the choir sit, just as he likes. I
was thinking about it last Sunday as they were singing
the anthem, and realizing what a lot one might do there
with a few sticks of dynamite."
"I doubt it," said Mr. Fyshe. "In fact, Newberry, to
speak very frankly, I begin to ask myself, Is Furlong
the man for the post?"
"Oh, surely," said Mr. Newberry in protest.
"Personally a charming fellow," went on Mr. Fyshe; "but
is he, all said and done, quite the man to conduct a
church? In the _first_ place, he is _not_ a businessman."
"No," said Mr. Newberry reluctantly, "that I admit."
"Very good. And, _secondly_, even in the matter of his
religion itself, one always feels as if he were too little
fixed, too unstable. He simply moves with the times.
That, at least, is what people are beginning to say of
him, that he is perpetually moving with the times. It
doesn't do, Newberry, it doesn't do." Whereupon Mr.
Newberry went away troubled and wrote to Fareforth Furlong
a confidential letter with a signed cheque in it for the
amount of Mr. Fyshe's interest, and with such further
offerings of dynamite, of underpinning and blasting as
his conscience prompted.
When the rector received and read the note and saw the
figures of the cheque, there arose such a thankfulness
in his spirit as he hadn't felt for months, and he may
well have murmured, for the repose of Mr. Newberry's
soul, a prayer not found in the rubric of King James.
All the more cause had he to feel light at heart, for as
it chanced, it was on that same evening that the
Dumfarthings, father and daughter, were to take tea at
the rectory. Indeed, a few minutes before six o'clock
they might have been seen making their way from the manse
to the rectory.
On their way along the avenue the minister took occasion
to reprove his daughter for the worldliness of her hat
(it was a little trifle from New York that she had bought
out of the Sunday School money--a temporary loan); and
a little further on he spoke to her severely about the
parasol she carried; and further yet about the strange
fashion, specially condemned by the Old Testament, in
which she wore her hair. So Catherine knew in her heart
from this that she must be looking her very prettiest,
and went into the rectory radiant.
The tea was, of course, an awkward meal at the best.
There was an initial difficulty about grace, not easily
surmounted. And when the Rev. Mr. Dumfarthing sternly
refused tea as a pernicious drink weakening to the system,
the Anglican rector was too ignorant of the presbyterian
system to know enough to give him Scotch whiskey.
But there were bright spots in the meal as well. The
rector was even able to ask Catherine, sideways as a
personal question, if she played tennis; and she was able
to whisper behind her hand, "Not allowed," and to make
a face in the direction of her father, who was absorbed
for the moment in a theological question with Juliana.
Indeed, before the conversation became general again the
rector had contrived to make a rapid arrangement with
Catherine whereby she was to come with him to the Newberry's
tennis court the day following and learn the game, with
or without permission.
So the tea was perhaps a success in its way. And it is
noteworthy that Juliana spent the days that followed it
in reading Calvin's "Institutes" (specially loaned to
her) and "Dumfarthing on the Certainty of Damnation" (a
gift), and in praying for her brother--a task practically
without hope. During which same time the rector in white
flannels, and Catherine in a white duck skirt and blouse,
were flying about on the green grass of the Newberrys'
court, and calling, "love," "love all," to one another
so gaily and so brazenly that even Mr. Newberry felt that
there must be something in it.
But all these things came merely as interludes in the
moving currents of greater events; for as the summer
faded into autumn and autumn into winter the anxieties
of the trustees of St. Asaph's began to call for action
of some sort.
* * * * * * *
"Edward," said the rector's father on the occasion of
their next quarterly discussion, "I cannot conceal from
you that the position of things is very serious. Your
statements show a falling off in every direction. Your
interest is everywhere in arrears; your current account
overdrawn to the limit. At this rate, you know, the end
is inevitable. Your debenture and bondholders will decide
to foreclose; and if they do, you know, there is no power
that can stop them. Even with your limited knowledge of
business you are probably aware that there is no higher
power that can influence or control the holder of a first
mortgage."
"I fear so," said the Rev. Edward very sadly.
"Do you not think perhaps that some of the shortcoming
lies with yourself?" continued Mr. Furlong. "Is it not
possible that as a preacher you fail somewhat, do not,
as it were, deal sufficiently with fundamental things as
others do? You leave untouched the truly vital issues,
such things as the creation, death, and, if I may refer
to it, the life beyond the grave."
As a result of which the Reverend Edward preached a series
of special sermons on the creation for which he made a
special and arduous preparation in the library of Plutoria
University. He said that it had taken a million, possibly
a hundred million years of quite difficult work to
accomplish, and that though when we looked at it all was
darkness still we could not be far astray if we accepted
and held fast to the teachings of Sir Charles Lyell. The
book of Genesis, he said was not to be taken as meaning
a day when it said a day, but rather something other than
a mere day; and the word "light" meant not exactly light
but possibly some sort of phosphorescence, and that the
use of the word "darkness" was to be understood not as
meaning darkness, but to be taken as simply indicating
obscurity. And when he had quite finished, the congregation
declared the whole sermon to be mere milk and water. It
insulted their intelligence, they said. After which, a
week later, the Rev. Dr. Dumfarthing took up the same
subject, and with the aid of seven plain texts pulverized
the rector into fragments.
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