I went away with a heavy heart.
However, when I sat in the choir at Deepdale and looked at my large congregation, I felt a little bit better about it; besides, I could only see the atrocity by craning my head forward in a manner most unbecoming to a visiting preacher. The service went—and why shouldn’t it?—without incident, until, during the last verse of the hymn, I gathered my notes together and mounted the pulpit stairs. As I turned to face my congregation, still lustily singing, the sun was shining straight through the yellowest part of the dragon in front of St George. I was tempted, and I fell. Fourteen short Latin words came to my lips, and I mouthed them inaudibly during the rousing ‘A-M-E-E-E-N’. Blushing like a novice, but in thankful relief that nothing untoward had happened, I gave out my text and launched my sermon. I was just coming to my peroration when something did happen. There was a sudden gust of tempest and the sun hid his face, and the window of St George fairly ‘exploded’—there is no other word for it—into the body of the church. There was consternation, but no panic. These countrymen take some shifting! Nobody was hurt, and I was able to finish my address. I say there was no panic, but I knew, to my distress, that there were two voices arguing within me: one saying, ‘You’re a silly old man, an irreverent old man, and you will do a penance for your sacrilege’; but the other was the voice of Joseph Damm, and he was rubbing his hands together and saying: ‘That was no ordinary storm, Doctor Bigod, no ordinary capful of wind. You’ll find it most operative, Mr Canon, most operative!’
What Petrie said to me later was no help, either. ‘It’s quite extraordinary, Bigod. The glass isn’t broken at all. It’s ground to an absolute powder.’ And he showed me the tiny fragments of orange and red that the verger had been able to sweep up from the aisle.
‘It must be this cheap modern synthesized glass,’ I said. But, as you may realize, I was not at all easy in my mind.
Time passed, and again slow-moving, lethargic forgetfulness took that horrible little malediction from the surface of my mind. I was able to get away from Avon for a considerable holiday. A former room-mate of mine at Oxford was now a Highland Laird of some consequence, and I had a standing but never-realized invitation to stay with him in Ross. One summer I went. There was a gay and irresponsible party of young things in the house: children, nieces, fiancés, and friends, a harmless though worldly congeries. I was introduced to a hateful game called ‘Truth’, and though, to me, the revelations of some of the maidens of the household were most surprising and hardly to be protected even by the advance dispensation of ‘privilege’, my truthful history of the stained-glass window seemed to ‘bring the house down’, a feat I had hitherto only thought ascribable to Samson. The daughter of the house, Bettina, thought otherwise. She considered the thing shatteringly delicious. She was, if you like, and I allowed myself later on to be blandished into promising to do one thing for her—as a surprise for Daddy. And that turned out to be ‘the damning of the Dougalls’s Distillery’, which spoiled her father’s view, and, she said slyly, was ruining the natives. ‘I know how strong your views on temperance are, Doctor Bigod.’ In vain did I expostulate and offer to do anything else. She was adamant, and a little imp at the back of my mind kept saying that ‘one extraordinary blast of wind abolishing a cheap glass window did not entitle me to call myself a magician—go on—don’t be an old ass—nothing can happen. So I sent her out of the room and pointed my finger at the thin yellow chimney, and the corrugated iron roofs which they had thoughtfully painted a contrasting red.
And nothing happened.
But three nights later there was a redder glow in the sky, and the distillery was burned to the ground. I made the child swear by the Wrath of God that she would keep our secret. How was I to know that the details of it were already round the house? I found it wise to leave for the south the following day. Heaven knows I wrestled with myself. Was I damned living? Or was it a quirk of coincidence, an elaborate jest played by Fate? I still do not know. I gave up collecting old books then! Sheer panic!
My Laird wrote to me some months later to tell me that Dougalls had done sufficiently well out of the insurance to start building a new, fouler, and larger distillery on the original site.
The Dean turned to me. ‘What do you think I ought to do?’ he asked. ‘My friend Struan has now asked me—jocularly, you know—to curse it again. He adds that he is prepared to pay for results, and will give five hundred pounds to the Avon Infants’ School if, as he so delicately puts it, “anything happens”.’
‘That’s good money, Doctor Bigod,’ I said. ‘It seems to my casuistic mind that more good can be done with Struan’s money here in Avon than Dougalls’s whisky can ever do!’
‘That is one way of putting it—but I think you are tempting me, in the old-fashioned way, to do evil that good may come . . .’
‘Distilleries are inflammable things,’ I said, ‘particularly when business is bad and insurance premiums have been paid! Had you thought of that, Doctor Bigod?’
‘I wish I’d never seen that miserable book,’ said the Dean, and looked at his watch. ‘Heavens! I’m due at a Council Meeting. I can’t wait for the bride. Tell her mother I thought she looked beautiful.’
I shall never know which he meant to compliment.
I thought over poor Bigod’s troubles for the rest of that week, and finally, on Tuesday I think it was, I rang him up at his house in the close. The thought of the dear old fellow being troubled over fifteen years by this silly, silly business had made me feel that I ought to rally round myself. The housekeeper, an acidulated but efficient lady of fifty or so, answered it. No, she didn’t know if the Dean would see me, but she’d certainly like me to see him. He was in a terrible taking seemingly; first a telegram, and then on top of that he’d found something in a book. Something had drove ’im crazy, if I wanted to know her opinion. I hung up on her and ordered the car at once.
I arrived in the close to find the moon-silvered grass alive with people: firemen and onlookers. The Deanery was blazing merrily. I stopped the Austin and got out. With some difficulty I forced my way through the crowd until I could catch the attention of Wigglesworth, the captain of the fire-brigade, a good friend and a patient of mine.
‘Evening, Doctor Wilfred,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad business yon, though a grand sight.’
‘Anybody c-c-caught?’ I asked him anxiously.
‘I fear so. We got that screaming hell-cat of a housekeeper out, but we couldn’t reach Doctor Bigod. The fire had got too good a hold, and it started in his library. Those old books of his burned up fine!’
I left him to his professional duties, and turned to look at the glowing shell of the Deanery. It was barely an hour since I had spoken with the housekeeper. Old houses are fine fuel for a chance spark, but the Deanery was not modernized, and surely no long-smouldering beam could suddenly flare to an instantaneous destruction like this! This was no ordinary fire—the whole house was gutted; nothing left but the four walls and the steaming skeleton of the roof. The place had been blasted!