Soul of a Bishop | Page 5

their conviction that the bishop
did not really believe in the Creeds he uttered.
And that unfortunate first admission stuck terribly in his throat.
Oh! Why had he made it?
(3)
Sleep had gone.
The awakened sleeper groaned, sat up in the darkness, and felt
gropingly in this unaccustomed bed and bedroom first for the edge of
the bed and then for the electric light that was possibly on the little

bedside table.
The searching hand touched something. A water-bottle. The hand
resumed its exploration. Here was something metallic and smooth, a
stem. Either above or below there must be a switch....
The switch was found, grasped, and turned.
The darkness fled.
In a mirror the sleeper saw the reflection of his face and a corner of the
bed in which he lay. The lamp had a tilted shade that threw a slanting
bar of shadow across the field of reflection, lighting a right-angled
triangle very brightly and leaving the rest obscure. The bed was a very
great one, a bed for the Anakim. It had a canopy with yellow silk
curtains, surmounted by a gilded crown of carved wood. Between the
curtains was a man's face, clean-shaven, pale, with disordered brown
hair and weary, pale-blue eyes. He was clad in purple pyjamas, and the
hand that now ran its fingers through the brown hair was long and lean
and shapely.
Beside the bed was a convenient little table bearing the light, a
water-bottle and glass, a bunch of keys, a congested pocket- book, a
gold-banded fountain pen, and a gold watch that indicated a quarter
past three. On the lower edge of the picture in the mirror appeared the
back of a gilt chair, over which a garment of peculiar construction had
been carelessly thrown. It was in the form of that sleeveless cassock of
purple, opening at the side, whose lower flap is called a bishop's apron;
the corner of the frogged coat showed behind the chair-back, and the
sash lay crumpled on the floor. Black doeskin breeches, still warmly
lined with their pants, lay where they had been thrust off at the corner
of the bed, partly covering black hose and silver-buckled shoes.
For a moment the tired gaze of the man in the bed rested upon these
evidences of his episcopal dignity. Then he turned from them to the
watch at the bedside.
He groaned helplessly.
(4)
These country doctors were no good. There wasn't a physician in the
diocese. He must go to London.
He looked into the weary eyes of his reflection and said, as one makes a
reassuring promise, "London."
He was being worried. He was being intolerably worried, and he was ill

and unable to sustain his positions. This doubt, this sudden discovery of
controversial unsoundness, was only one aspect of his general
neurasthenia. It had been creeping into his mind since the "Light Unden
the Altar" controversy. Now suddenly it had leapt upon him from his
own unwary lips.
The immediate trouble arose from his loyalty. He had followed the
King's example; he had become a total abstainer and, in addition, on his
own account he had ceased to smoke. And his digestion, which
Princhester had first made sensitive, was deranged. He was suffering
chemically, suffering one of those nameless sequences of
maladjustments that still defy our ordinary medical science. It was
afflicting him with a general malaise, it was affecting his energy, his
temper, all the balance and comfort of his nerves. All day he was weary;
all night he was wakeful. He was estranged from his body. He was
distressed by a sense of detachment from the things about him, by a
curious intimation of unreality in everything he experienced. And with
that went this levity of conscience, a heaviness of soul and a levity of
conscience, that could make him talk as though the Creeds did not
matter--as though nothing mattered....
If only he could smoke!
He was persuaded that a couple of Egyptian cigarettes, or three at the
outside, a day, would do wonders in restoring his nervous calm. That,
and just a weak whisky and soda at lunch and dinner. Suppose now--!
His conscience, his sense of honour, deserted him. Latterly he had had
several of these conscience-blanks; it was only when they were over
that he realized that they had occurred.
One might smoke up the chimney, he reflected. But he had no
cigarettes! Perhaps if he were to slip downstairs....
Why had he given up smoking?
He groaned aloud. He and his reflection eyed one another in mutual
despair.
There came before his memory the image of a boy's face, a swarthy
little boy, grinning, grinning with a horrible knowingness and pointing
his finger--an accusing finger. It had been the most exasperating,
humiliating, and shameful incident