Children of the Archbishop (48 page)

It was 10 o'clock when Dr. Trump left him. And at three in the morning—a mere five hours later—the phone rang and Dr. Trump found an hysterical Mrs. Warple on the other end of it.

A bedroom telephone extension was something that, on principle, Dr. Trump did not allow himself. But to-night, as Dr. Trump, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, found himself stumbling down the stairs barefoot—in his agitation he had accidentally kicked his bedroom slippers too far under the bed to be able to recover them—he envied people who merely had to thrust an arm out of the warm bedclothes. And the chill of the ornamental tiling in the hall was so intense that he could not concentrate properly.

“Yes … yes,” he said, shifting from one icy foot on to the other. “What is it? Dr. Trump here. Who wants him?”

He paused while the telephone crackled back at him.

“Mrs. Warple!” he said, in astonishment. “You … mother dear!”

The voice at the other end was so agitated and confused that he could not follow it.

“The Bishop … yes … yes,” he said at last. “You say he's thinking. At this time of night! But surely he must be thinking
something
. What is it exactly that he's thinking about?”

Dr. Trump removed the receiver six inches from his ear because Mrs. Warple was speaking no longer: she was screaming at him. And then the awful truth came to him: the word was “sinking.” And his spine went as cold as his feet as he realised the significance of it.

Then promptly his manliness, his sense of authority, asserted itself.

“I'll be round immediately,” he said. “Stay where you are. Fetch a doctor. Don't move. Keep calm. I'm just leaving.”

And with the word “sinking” tattooed upon his mind, Dr. Trump ran back upstairs to tell Felicity.

It was a good fifteen minutes' walk and the roads were empty of human beings. But not of cats. They stood scowling in gateways and skulking about from amid the shadows. After one peculiarly large tabby had appeared suddenly beneath their feet from nowhere pursued by a lean hunting Tom, Dr. Trump remarked upon it.

“How little,” he remarked, “is one aware of the nocturnal existence of the ordinary domestic cat …”

But he got no farther.

“For goodness' sake don't start talking about cats,” Felicity interrupted him. “Just hurry.”

And after that, Dr. Trump, snubbed and offended, walked in silence by her side through the lonely streets.

The doctor had already arrived by the time they got there. And Dr. Trump took a liking to him at first sight. He seemed so exactly right: dignified, experienced, not easily rattled, respectful. Everything that he said was quiet and re-assuring. There certainly was inflammation, he admitted: but only the merest trace of it—a spot the size of a pin's head. And with care and a little nursing even the pin's head would vanish and Bishop Warple would soon be back again, marrying, confirming, organising.

It was an hour or so before dawn when Dr. Trump shook the doctor warmly by the hand. And by sunset he realised that he had made one of his rare misreadings of human character. For the man was nothing less than an impostor, and Dr. Trump was already considering reporting him to the General Medical Council. If a common suburban doctor imagined that he could afford to let Dr. Trump's father-in-law slip through his fingers like that he was going to be shown his mistake.

But already it was too late. All that was eternal in Bishop Warple had departed from them. He lay there motionless upon his bed, not even having stirred from his last sleep. His day's correspondence and his Bible were beside him and, over on the dressing-table stood the copy of
Popular Cycling
with the article on spring-forks pathetically turned down for future reference.

As Dr. Trump stood there, gazing down on him, he was disappointed in himself. Even shocked. Irresistibly his thoughts rushed pell-mell into the black future. With Bishop Warple gone, there would be no more of those little Lambeth luncheon parties. Personal introductions count for so much with busy people like Prelates, and Bishop Warple had been wonderfully good at pushing his own son-in-law. And now …

But how truly disgraceful! To be guilty of thoughts like that when he should have been at prayer. It was downright appalling.

Going down on his knees, Dr. Trump asked for forgiveness. He was sincere, contrite, fervent. But his prayers were still all about himself.

“Oh, Lord, drive all vain ambitions from me,” he began in a torrent rush of emotion. “Chasten my mind and subdue it. Cleanse me of self-interest and purge me of unworthy thoughts. Make me meek. Make me humble …”

He felt better when he got up again, and decided to spend the rest of the evening comforting Mrs. Warple and Felicity.

As for the funeral itself, it was everything that Dr. Trump could have wished; and he felt that Mrs. Warple should have been pleased, too.

A couple of Bishops—only one of them a Suffragan, like the deceased—a well-known Dean and quite a cluster of minor Canons were among the mourners, and the sheer quantity of flowers was enough to make the verger comment. Dr. Trump's own tribute—white lilac with a centrepiece of daffodils and grape hyacinth—looked quite dwarfed alongside the mammoth structures of roses, gladioli, and Arum lilies that had kept arriving from the florists during those first dreadful days of loss and sadness.

By the time the chief mourners, consisting of Mrs. Warple, Felicity and himself, had regained the first carriage Dr. Trump allowed himself for the moment to relax. A thoroughly satisfactory funeral, he kept reflecting; satisfactory in every way. It was merely a pity that he had not for once been able to give Dame Eleanor a lift in a car noticeably more magnificent than her own. Little things like that—as courtesies he liked to think of them—are always remembered; and, in the long run pay dividends.

Even so, there was much for which to be thankful. Mrs. Warple's behaviour, for example. Throughout the whole ordeal it had been exemplary. Her few tears had been not only natural, they had been seemly. Also, she looked distinctly better in black; quieter and more subdued.

Not so her daughter. Felicity in black, Dr. Trump had decided gloomily, looked simply terrible. Like a small, weird nun. And the very moment it was proper, he proposed to whisk her back again into tweeds and jumpers. But he was too experienced a husband to say anything about it at a moment like the present. Instead, he murmured something to the effect that though Mrs. Warple had lost a husband she must not forget that she had already gained a son. And then, more to fill up the sentence than for any other reason, he added: “You will always be at home with us.”

A moment later Dr. Trump's hand was clasped violently by Felicity's. It was a small, rather bony hand. And the strength in it was astonishing. It was like finding oneself snatched up by an eagle. Dr. Trump winced. The next moment, however, the thought of mere physical pain meant nothing to him. For Felicity had taken his words at their face value.

“That's it! Stay with us always, Mother dearest,” she said eagerly. “You can have Samuel's study, and he can have the little room upstairs. We'll send round for the rest of your things in the morning.”

It was because of that—because at one stroke he had got his mother-in-law and lost his study—that Dr. Trump did less, considerably less, than justice to himself at the funeral reception. He was vacant and staring, like a man stunned. He spoke to no one, not even the Bishops. And his behaviour did not pass unnoticed.

“I'm afraid poor Trump's taking it badly,” the Dean remarked to one of the Canons as they were on their way back together. “I didn't know the fellow had so much feeling in him.”

Sweetie was eleven now. A ripe age; the age for serious decisions, as Dr. Trump had just reminded her.

She was standing on one side of his desk on the small square of red carpet, and he was seated on the other. And because she was so short, she was at a disadvantage. Whenever Dr. Trump leaned back he disappeared from sight altogether, cut off from her by the top of the little rack in which he kept his note-paper and his “Urgent” labels.

But every time he bent forward he was near, frighteningly near. And his eyes were too close together: it was like a folded-up pair of scissors staring at her. He was ugly, Sweetie decided. So ugly, in fact, that she was sorry for him. Very sorry. It must be dreadful, she thought, having to go about looking like that.

And dreadful, too, being so cross always. He didn't look as though he had once been happy—in all his life. Half his time he was furious about something or other. He was furious at this very moment. Really furious. And all because of things that other people had said about her.

The report lay there on the desk in front of him, propped up against the blotter so that he could glance at it quickly again
if he felt his anger beginning to subside. And the bits that he had read out to her didn't seem to be too bad. They were true, too, most of them. And very sensible. Sweetie hadn't realised in fact that other people knew so much about her.

“Arithmetic: poor, does not try,” Dr. Trump was reading out aloud for the second time. “English: backward, cannot spell; History: fair, does not remember dates; Geography: poor, does not concentrate; Music: a pretty singing voice”—here Dr. Trump paused: the rest of the line read: “Excellent, altogether a very charming melody maker.” It was Mr. Prevarius who reported on singing and Mr. Prevarius's choice of words nauseated Dr. Trump. Then his eyes passed farther down the sheet and he began reading aloud once more. “Scripture: fair, does not seem interested; Needlework: disappointing, cannot sew buttonholes; Cookery: poor, careless on the practical side; Physical training: good, easy posture. Conduct: fair, unintentionally impertinent.”

The bit about physical training had slipped out as he was reading but he managed in time to introduce a quick note of contempt into his voice as he uttered it. Then he sat back and folded his hands in front of him.

“Not interested in Scripture,” he repeated. “Are you aware what those words imply? You, a pupil of the Archbishop Bodkin Hospital, and you have the impudence not to be interested in the Holy Scriptures!”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“You should be more than sorry,” Dr. Trump snapped back at her. “You should be ashamed. And more than ashamed. You should be contrite. Are you contrite?”

Sweetie nodded her head. It was safer than answering, because she did not know what the word meant. But she gave a quick little sniff as she nodded, just so that Dr. Trump would know that she was ready to cry if he wanted her to do so. Once she really started to cry she knew that it would be all over, and she could get back to her class-room again: Dr. Trump never kept any of the girls very long once they were crying.

But he evidently did not mean her to cry yet because he was still repeating bits out of the report. “Backward … fair … poor … fair … disappointing … poor …” he was saying. “Do you realise that in three years' time you will have to earn your living in the world?”

“Yes, sir,” Sweetie answered.

There was no conviction in her voice, however, because she did not really know how people did earn their living. It was one of the things that nobody had ever told her. She wasn't tall enough to serve in a shop like some of the girls who had gone out into the world: she wouldn't be able to reach things off the shelves properly. But perhaps she would grow, shoot up suddenly. At least, it was worth hoping.

And then Dr. Trump settled the problem for her.

“All our girls get situations, unless they are bad girls,” Dr. Trump told her. “But no one wants to take an idle, careless, clumsy creature. Who do you imagine”—here Dr. Trump flipped the report contemptuously with the back of his fingernails—“would want to take a girl with nothing in her favour except an easy posture and a pretty singing voice?”

Sweetie could not imagine, so she remained silent.

“Answer me,” Dr. Trump insisted.

Then she saw what he was driving at, and she was grateful to him. It made everything so simple.

“The man who is going to marry me,” she replied.

But from the expression on Dr. Trump's face, Sweetie realised that she must have been mistaken. All that he said was “Pah.” So perhaps she was too short even to get married. Already, however, Dr. Trump was speaking again, and that took her mind off things.

“Do you know what I should do if I were to do my duty?” he asked suddenly.

“No, sir,” Sweetie answered truthfully.

It was a surprising sort of question, because until he had asked it she had imagined that Dr. Trump always did do his duty.

“I should turn you out on to the streets,” he told her. “Turn you out so that you waste no more of the money that is being spent on you.”

That startled her. The prospect was both fascinating and alarming. Apart from the Sunday afternoon crocodile and the regular nature walks she had never been outside the Hospital in her life. Not once, since she had come there. And certainly not alone. It seemed a drastic sort of treatment for not being able to remember dates and sew buttonholes. What would she do at night-time, for instance? But, apparently, it was all a false alarm. For Dr. Trump was addressing her again.

“I shall not, however, turn you out,” he went on. “I shall ask for you to be kept here. And I shall ask for you to be observed.
From now on someone will be watching you—always. And at monthly intervals, I shall ask for a report. If that report …”

Dr. Trump had closed his eyes for a moment while he was speaking: it was a habit of his when he was collecting his thoughts and arranging them. But when he reopened his eyes he was amazed to find that Sweetie was no longer attending. She was peering fixedly out of the window, her face puckered up with the intensity of her stare.