The honest truth of the matter is that the vicar has no idea, no idea whatsoever, what Mrs Dunstable plans. The bishop’s letter, when he finally receives it on the morrow, will burst over him like a shell. For the vicar, keen amateur historian that he is, entertains a dream of England: an England of simple peasants with simple faith, and not the England of railways, penny newspapers and universal education.
Of course his England never existed, except as the Merrie England of bear-baiting, pugilism and Horse Fairs: of Gin Lane and smallpox epidemics. If one goes back far enough it might be be noted Hoading was a hotbed of Lollardism, Anabaptistry, Parliamentarianism, Puritanism, and other things the vicar disapproves of - but as he is a very poor historian, he has successfully averted his gaze from such matters...
Still, fresh from his daydreams of medieval piety, this is all a bit of a catastrophe. He will find, on his breakfast table tomorrow morning, the bishop’s cogently written argument for the village “Institute” and its aims, but for now all he knows is that his spiritual and temporal superior is wandering round his parish with a map and Mrs Dunstable, and can only imagine it is all connected in some way with earth closets.
The bishop and the minor canon are peering at the map, fingers strolling over its features. The doctor is appealed to. Mrs Dunstable is invited to look, which she does with a blatant lack of feminine diffidence, pointing at various features and waving her arms north, south, east or west as appropriate. Trying to draw near without adopting the pleading posture of a child left out, the vicar cannot see the map (the clerk has withdrawn its spread against his waistcoat to protect it from the breeze) but hears the doctor say “I don’t know, it’s still quite a distance from the body of the village....” and off they traipse, the bishop leading the way with Mrs Dunstable and the doctor, leaving the vicar to fall in behind with the clerk and the minor canon. The clerk is attempting to make notes in his pocket book while walking, and has handed the map to the minor canon, who is struggling to fold it. The vicar feels more and more the peevishness of a child who has been excluded from the discussion by the adults.
After a pleasant few minutes stroll past the burgeoning spring hedgerows, they come to a halt at a small field by a crossroads. Here the lane from the heath meets the road which leads to the church. The fourth lane, green with grass, is little used and leads only to a couple of farms. “This is very pleasant...” observes the bishop. The doctor shakes his head darkly. “Small boys...” he says.
The bishop’s enquiring glance is mild. They were all, after all, small boys once, except Mrs Dunstable. “There are no dwellings nearby” the doctor points out. “The surrounding ground would be misused, windows broken even.” Though pessimistic, his fears are based in experience: only the year before, his own cucumber frames had fallen victim to an incursion armed with catapults.
The bishop thinks it is a shame, as the position is otherwise so perfect. Perhaps a small cottage could be built on the plot too, to be rented out. It would provide an income and a caretaker in one? Everybody’s face brightens except the doctor’s: even the vicar attempts a simulacrum of agreement. But the doctor has further gloom to add. The better type of woman, he claims, would be reluctant to venture down unlighted roads on winter evenings: activities would be restricted to the time of the full moon. Also, the lane is very muddy in winter: something really ought to be done about it.
At this the vicar brightens. An improvement to the lane would be most felicitous, as it is the one he has to negotiate on his way to the railway station. “It is, indeed, grievously muddy!” he says, his first contribution so far. The bishop’s brow wrinkles, the episcopal eyebrows draw down. He likes the crossroads, he likes the idea of the caretaker’s cottage. “Is it so very bad?” he asks.
Mrs Dunstable, who has servants to send on errands, says it is not. The doctor, who has to take his dogcart down it on winter nights to deliver babies, says it is. The bishop gazes at the deep ruts, currently dry and dusty, and draws his own conclusions. The minor canon coughs, and says he shouldn’t like his sister to walk down from the village in the dark. Or indeed his kitchenmaid, he adds.
The vicar, both perplexed and anxious at these mentions of women gallivanting about at night, is left to his imaginings as the group, at the bishop’s suggestion, turns and walks back to the main village. Past the clusters of smaller cottages, past the first butcher, the grocer, the baker, and the second butcher they march, the clerk holding his pocket book, the minor canon the map. Past the better houses with their railings, and past the best with their mellow brick garden walls and tiny carriage-sweeps, till they come to the grassy enclosure with its lumps of moss-covered masonry.
In front of it they stand in a row, the vicar finding himself again on the outer edge of the group. Here, behind a badly-maintained five bar gate, is his precious priory. Here, or so he believes, acts of pious compassion were bestowed on the simple, trusting villagers, whose uncontaminated faith embraced saints and virgins as well as prophets and archangels. He is currently searching, desperately, in the archives for any mention of holy relics the noble institution might have held.
The bishop gestures that the map should be unfurled on top of the low stone wall. We know the vicar’s view of the ruins (that is his depiction of them we have used: there as much artistic license and inaccuracy in the watercolour as there is in his history: the ruins are far smaller and southern Lincolnshire is as flat as a pancake. He has also left out all the houses).
To the doctor they are an eyesore, a missing tooth in the smile of the village street. The minor canon finds them unimpressive, the clerk doesn’t care; Mrs Dunstable, who has known them all her life and played amongst them as a child, is ready to sacrifice them to the common good. “What is this land used for at present?” the bishop inquires.
The doctor tells him the grazing is rented out. Apart from that, it is used for the village boys to play football, the village girls to skip in, and after dark as a venue for “illicit intercourse”. Mrs Dunstable nods sagely: though not of a class to indulge in illicit intercourse, she had done some of her own courting seated on these dry, mossy tumps. The bishop, a most irreligious grin appearing under his beard, rubs his hands together.
Suppressing the glee in his voice, he affects horror. “You mean the secluded corners are used for, um.....” The doctor confirms that indeed the secluded corners of the venerable ruins are used for um. “If you ask me” he adds gloomily, “a substantial proportion of the firstborns of the village are conceived here.”