The rector had not been a shining light for years without learning how
to control his expression. He had a second, too, while she contorted her
face again, to recover himself.
"Thank you," he said gravely. "I much appreciate your telling me."
Mrs. Hayden had lowered her voice still more. The revelation took on the
appearance of conspiracy.
"In the early spring, probably," she said, "we shall need your services,
and your blessing."
So that was the end of one dream. He had dreamed so many--in his youth,
of spiritualizing his worldly flock; in middle life, of a bishopric; he
had dreamed of sons, to carry on the name he had meant to make famous.
But the failures of those dreams had been at once his own failure and
his own disappointment. This was different.
He was profoundly depressed. He wandered out of the crowd and, after
colliding with a man from the caterer's in a dark rear hall, found his
way up the servant's staircase to the small back room where he kept
the lares and penates of his quiet life, his pipe, his fishing rods, a
shabby old smoking coat, and back files of magazines which he intended
some day to read, when he got round to it.
The little room was jammed with old furniture, stripped from the lower
floor to make room for the crowd. He had to get down on his knees and
crawl under a table to reach his pipe. But he achieved it finally, still
with an air of abstraction, and lighted it. Then, as there was no place
to sit down, he stood in the center of the little room and thought.
He did not go down again. He heard the noise of the arriving and
departing motors subside, its replacement by the sound of clattering
china, being washed below in the pantry. He went down finally, to
be served with a meal largely supplemented by the left-overs of the
afternoon refreshments, ornate salads, fancy ices, and an overwhelming
table decoration that shut him off from his wife and Delight, and left
him in magnificent solitude behind a pyramid of flowers.
Bits of the afternoon's gossip reached him; the comments on Delight's
dress and her flowers; the reasons certain people had not come. But
nothing of the subject nearest his heart. At the end of the meal Delight
got up.
"I'm going to call up Mr. Spencer," she said. "He has about fifty
dollars' worth of thanks coming to him."
"I didn't see Graham," said Mrs. Haverford. "Was he here?"