The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

H >> Hugh Walpole >> The Cathedral

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32

Sometimes he did not come, sometimes she could not. They never stayed more
than ten minutes there together. No one from month to month at that hour
crossed that desolate path.

To-day he began impetuously. "If you hadn't come to-night, I think I would
have gone to find you. I had to see you. No, I had nothing to say. Only to
see you. But I am so lonely in that house. I always knew I was lonely--
never more than when I was married--but now.... If I hadn't these ten
minutes most days I'd die, I think...."

They didn't touch one another, but stood opposite gazing, face into face.

"What are we to do?" he said. "It can't be wicked just to meet like this
and to talk a little."

"I'd like you to know," she answered, "that you and my son--you are all I
have in the world. The two of you. And my son has some secret from me.

"I have been so lonely too. But I don't feel lonely any more. Your
friendship for me...."

"Yes, I am your friend. Think of me like that. Your friend from the first
moment I saw you--you so quiet and gentle and unhappy. I realized your
unhappiness instantly. No one else in this place seemed to notice it. I
believe God meant us to be friends, meant me to bring you happiness--a
little...."

"Happiness?" she shivered. "Isn't it cold to-night? Do you see that
strange green cloud? Ah, now it is gone. All the light is going.... Do you
believe in God?"

He came closer to her. His hand touched her arm.

"Yes," he answered fiercely. "And He means me to care for you." His hand,
trembling, stroked her arm. She did not move. His hand, shaking, touched
her neck. He bent forward and kissed her neck, her mouth, then her eyes.

She leant her head wearily for an instant on his shoulder, then,
whispering good-night, she turned and went quietly up the path.

Chapter II

Souls on Sunday

I must have been thirteen or fourteen years of age--it may have been
indeed in this very year '97--when I first read Stevenson's story of
_Treasure Island_. It is the fashion, I believe, now with the Clever
Solemn Ones to despise Stevenson as a writer of romantic Tushery,

All the same, if it's realism they want I'm still waiting to see something
more realistic than Pew or Long John Silver. Realism may depend as truly
on a blind man's tap with his stick upon the ground as on any number of
adulteries.

In those young years, thank God, I knew nothing about realism and read the
tale for what it was worth. And it was worth three hundred bags of gold.
Now, on looking back, it seems to me that the spirit that overtook our
town just at this time was very like the spirit that seized upon Dr.
Livesey, young Hawkins and the rest when they discovered the dead
Buccaneer's map. This is no forced parallel. It was with a real sense of
adventure that the Whispering began about the Brandons and Ronder and the
Pybus St. Anthony living and the rest of it. Where did the Whispering
start? Who can ever tell?

Our Polchester Whispering was carried on and fostered very largely by our
servants. As in every village and town in Glebeshire, the intermarrying
that had been going on for generations was astonishing. Every servant-
maid, every errand-boy, every gardener and coachman in Polchester was
cousin, brother or sister to every other servant-maid, errand-boy,
gardener and coachman. They made, these people, a perfect net about our
town.

The things that they carried from house to house, however, were never the
actual things; they were simply the material from which the actual things
were made. Nor was the construction of the actual tale positively
malicious; it was only that our eyes were caught by the drama of life and
we could not help but exclaim with little gasps and cries at the wonderful
excitement of the history that we saw. Our treasure-hunting was simply for
the fun of the thrill of the chase, not at all that we wished harm to a
soul in the world. If, on occasion, a slight hint of maliciousness did
find its place with us, it was only because in this insecure world it is
delightful to reaffirm our own security as we watch our neighbours topple
over. We do not wish them to "topple," but if somebody has got to fall we
would rather it were not ourselves.

Brandon had been for so long so remarkable a figure in our world that the
slightest stir of the colours in his picture was immediately noticeable.
From the moment of Falk's return from Oxford it was expected that
something "would happen."

It often occurs that a situation between a number of people is vague and
indefinite, until a certain moment, often quite undramatic and negative in
itself, arrives, when the situation suddenly fixes itself and stands
forward, set full square to the world, as a definite concrete fact. There
was a certain Sunday in the April of this year that became for the
Archdeacon and a number of other people such a definite crisis--and yet it
might quite reasonably have been said at the end of it that nothing very
much had occurred.

Everything seemed to happen in Polchester on Sundays. For one thing more
talking was done on Sunday than on all the other days of the week
together. Then the Cathedral itself came into its full glory on that day.
Every one gathered there, every one talked to every one else before
parting, and the long spaces and silences and pauses of the day allowed
the comments and the questions and the surmises to grow and swell and
distend into gigantic images before night took every one and stretched
them upon their backs to dream.

What the Archdeacon liked was an "off" Sunday, when he had nothing to do
save to walk majestically into his place in the choir stall, to read,
perhaps, a Lesson, to talk gravely to people who came to have tea with him
after the Sunday Evensong, to reflect lazily, after Sunday supper, his
long legs stretched out in front of him, a pipe in his mouth, upon the
goodness and happiness and splendour of the Cathedral and the world and
his own place in it. Such a Sunday was a perfect thing--and such a Sunday
April 18 ought to have been...alas! it was not so.

It began very early, somewhere about seven in the morning, with a horrible
incident. The rule on Sundays was that the maid knocked at half-past six
on the door and gave the Archdeacon and his wife their tea. The Archdeacon
lay luxuriously drinking it until exactly a quarter to seven, then he
sprang out of bed, had his cold bath, performed his exercises, and shaved
in his little dressing-room. At about a quarter past seven, nearly
dressed, he returned into the bedroom, to find Mrs. Brandon also nearly
dressed. On this particular day while he drank his tea his wife appeared
to be sleeping; that did not make him bound out of bed any the less
noisily-after twenty years of married life you do not worry about such
things; moreover it was quite time that his wife bestirred herself. At a
quarter past seven he came into the bedroom in his shirt and trousers,
humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers." It was a fine spring morning, so he
flung up the window and looked out into the Precinct, fresh and dewy in
the morning sun, silent save for the inquisitive reiteration of an early
jackdaw. Then he turned back, and, to his amazement, saw that his wife was
lying, her eyes wide open, staring in front of her.

"My dear!" he cried. "Aren't you well?"

"I'm perfectly well," she answered him, her eyes maintaining their fixed
stare. The tone in which she said these words was quite new--it was not
submissive, it was not defensive, it was indifferent.

She must be ill. He came close to the bed.

"Do you realise the time?" he asked. "Twenty minutes past seven. I'm sure
you don't want to keep me waiting."

She didn't answer him. Certainly she must be ill. There was something
strange about her eyes.

"You _must_ be ill," he repeated. "You look ill. Why didn't you say
so? Have you got a headache?"

"I'm not ill. I haven't got a headache, and I'm not coming to Early
Service."

"You're not ill, and you're not coming..." he stammered in his amazement.
"You've forgotten. There isn't late Celebration."

She gave him no answer, but turned on her side, closing her eyes.

He came right up to the bed, frowning down upon her.

"Amy--what does this mean? You're not ill, and yet you're not coming to
Celebration? Why? I insist upon an answer."

She said nothing.

He felt that anger, of which he had tried now for many years to beware,
flooding his throat.

With tremendous self-control he said quietly: "What is the matter with
you, Amy? You must tell me at once."

She did not open her eyes but said in a voice so low that he scarcely
caught the words:

"There is nothing the matter. I am not ill, and I'm not coming to Early
Service."

"Why?"

"Because I don't wish to go."

For a moment he thought that he was going to bend down and lift her bodily
out of bed. His limbs felt as though they were prepared for such an
action.

But to his own surprised amazement he did nothing, he said nothing. He
looked at the bed, at the hollow where his head had been, at her head with
her black hair scattered on the pillow, at her closed eyes, then he went
away into his dressing-room. When he had finished dressing he came back
into the bedroom, looked across at her, motionless, her eyes still closed,
lying on her side, felt the silence of the room, the house, the Precincts
broken only by the impertinent jackdaw.

He went downstairs.

Throughout the Early Celebration he remained in a condition of amazed
bewilderment. From his position just above the altar-rails he could see
very clearly the Bishop's Tomb; the morning sun reflected in purple
colours from the East window played upon its blue stone. It caught the
green ring and flashed splashes of fire from its heart. His mind went back
to that day, not so very long ago, when, with triumphant happiness, he had
seemed to share in the Bishop's spirit, to be dust of his dust, and bone
of his bone. That had been the very day, he remembered, of Falk's return
from Oxford. Since that day everything had gone wrong for him--Falk, the
Elephant, Ronder, Foster, the Chapter. And now his wife! Never in all the
years of his married life had she spoken to him as she had done that
morning. She must be on the edge of a serious illness, a very serious
illness. Strangely a new concern for her, a concern that he had never felt
in his life before, arose in his heart. Poor Amy--and how tiresome if she
were ill, the house all at sixes and sevens! With a shock he realised that
his mind was not devotional. He swung himself back to the service, looking
down benevolently upon the two rows of people waiting patiently to come in
their turn to the altar steps.

At breakfast, however, there Mrs. Brandon was, looking quite her usual
self, in the Sunday dress of grey silk, making the tea, quiet as she
always was, answering questions submissively, patiently, "as the wife of
an Archdeacon should." He tried to show her by his manner that he had been
deeply shocked, but, unfortunately, he had been shocked, annoyed,
indignant on so many occasions when there had been no real need for it,
that to-day, when there was the occasion, he felt that he made no
impression.

The bells pealed for morning service, the sun shone; as half-past ten
approached, little groups of people crossed the Precincts and vanished
into the mouth of the great West door. Now were Lawrence and Cobbett in
their true glory--Lawrence was in his fine purple robe, the Sunday silk
one. He stood at the far end of the nave, just under the choir-screen,
waiting for the aristocracy, for whom the front seats were guarded with
cords which only he might untie. How deeply pleased he was when some
unfortunate stranger, ignorant in the ways of the Cathedral, walked, with
startling clatter, up the whole length of the shining nave and endeavoured
to penetrate one of these sacred defences! Majestically--staff in hand, he
came forward, shook his snow-white head, looking down upon the intrusive
one more in sorrow than in anger, spoke no word, but motioned the audacity
back down the nave again to the place where Cobbett officiated. Back,
clatter, clatter, blushing and confused, the stranger retreated, watched,
as it seemed to him, by a thousand sarcastic and cynical eyes. The bells
slipped from their jangling peal into a solemn single note. The Mere
People were in their places at the back of the nave, the Great Ones
leaving their entrance until the very last moment. There was a light in
the organ-loft; very softly Brockett began his voluntary--clatter,
clatter, clatter, and the School arrived, the small boys, swallowed by
their Eton collars, first, filing into their places to the right of the
screen, then the middle boys, a little indifferent and careless, then the
Fifth and Sixth in their "stick-up" collars, haughty and indifferent
indeed.

Dimly, on the other side of the screen, the School boys in their surplices
could be seen settling into their places between the choir and the altar.

A rustling of skirts, and the aristocracy entered in ones and twos from
the side doors that opened out of the Cloisters. For some of them--for a
very few--Lawrence had his confidential smile. For Mrs. Sampson, for
instance--for Mrs. Combermere, for Mrs. Ryle and Mrs. Brandon.

A very special one for Mrs. Brandon because of his high opinion of her
husband. She was nothing very much--"a mean little woman," he thought her
--but the Archdeacon had married her. That was enough.

Joan was with her, conscious that every one must be noticing her-the
D'Arcy girls and Cynthia Ryle and Gladys Sampson, they would all be
looking and criticising. Hustle, rustle, rustle--here was an event indeed!
Lady St. Leath was come, and with her in attendance Johnny and Hetty.
Lawrence hurried forward, disregarding Mrs. Brandon, who was compelled to
undo her cord for herself. He led Lady St. Leath forward with a ceremony,
a dignity, that was marvellous to see. She moved behind him as though she
owned the Cathedral, or rather could have owned it had she thought it
worth her while. All the little boys in the Upper Third and Lower Fourth
turned their necks in their Eton collars and watched. What a bonnet she
was wearing! All the colours of the rainbow, odd, indeed, perched there on
the top of her untidy white hair!

Every one settled down; the voluntary was louder, the single note of the
bell suddenly more urgent. Ladies looked about them. Ellen Stiles saw Miss
Dobell--smile, smile. Joan saw Cynthia Ryle--smile, smile. Lawrence, with
the expression of the Angel Gabriel waiting to admit into heaven a new
troop of repentant sinners, stood expectant. The sun filtered in dusty
ladders of coloured light and fell in squares upon the empty spaces of the
nave.

The bell suddenly ceased, a long melodious and melancholy "Amen" came from
somewhere far away in the purple shadow. Every one moved; a noise like a
little uncertain breeze blew through the Cathedral as the congregation
rose; then the choir filed through, the boys, the men, the Precentor, old
Canon Morphew and older Canon Batholomew, Canon Rogers, his face bitter
and discontented, Canon Foster, Bentinck-Major, last of all, Archdeacon
Brandon. They had filed into their places in the choir, they were
kneeling, the Precentor's voice rang out....

The familiar sound of Canon Ryle's voice recalled Mrs. Brandon to time and
place. She was kneeling, her gloved hands pressed close to her face. She
was looking into thick dense darkness, a darkness penetrated with the
strong scent of Russia leather and the faint musty smell that always
seemed to rise from the Cathedral hassocks and the woodwork upon which she
leant. Until Ryle's voice roused her she had been swimming in space and
eternity; behind her, like a little boat bobbing distressfully in her
track, was the scene of that early morning with which that day had opened.
She saw herself, as it were, the body of some quite other woman, lying in
that so familiar bedroom and saying "No"--saying it again and again and
again. "No. No. No."

Why had she said "No," and was it not in reality another woman who had
said it, and why had he been so quiet? It was not his way. There had been
no storm. She shivered a little behind her gloves.

"Dearly beloved brethren," began the Precentor, pleading, impersonal.

Slowly her brain, like a little dark fish striking up from deep green
waters, rose to the surface of her consciousness. What she was then most
surely aware of was that she was on the very edge of something; it was a
quite physical sensation, as though she had been walking over mist-soaked
downs and had suddenly hesitated, to find herself looking down along the
precipitances of jagged black rock. It was "jagged black rock" over which
she was now peering.

The two sides of the choir were now rivalling one another over the psalms,
hurling verses at one another with breathless speed, as though they said:
"Here's the ball. Catch. Oh, you _are_ slow!"

In just that way across the field of Amy Brandon's consciousness two
voices were shouting at one another.

One cried: "See what she's in for, the foolish woman! She's not up to it.
It will finish her."

And the other answered: "Well, she is in for it! So it's no use warning
her any longer. She wants it. She's going to have it."

And the first repeated: "It never pays! It never pays! It never pays!"

And the second replied: "No, but nothing can stop her now. Nothing!"

Could nothing stop her? Behind the intricacies of one of Smart's most
elaborate "Te Deums," with clenched hands and little shivers of
apprehension, she fought a poor little battle.

"We praise Thee, O God. We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord...."

"The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise Thee...." A boy's voice
rose, "Thou did'st not abhor the Virgin's womb...."

Let her step back now while there was yet time. She had her children. She
had Talk. Falk! She looked around her, almost expecting him to be at her
side, although she well knew that he had long ago abandoned the Cathedral
services. Ah, it wasn't fair! If only he loved her, if only any one loved
her, any one whom she herself could love. If any one wanted her!

Lawrence was waiting, his back turned to the nave. As the last words of
the "Te Deum" rose into a shout of triumphant confidence he turned and
solemnly, his staff raised, advanced, Archdeacon Brandon behind him. Now,
as always, a little giggle of appreciation ran down the nave as the
Archdeacon marched forward to the Lectern. The tourists whispered and
asked one another who thai fine-looking man was. They craned their necks
into the aisle. And he _did_ look fine, his head up, his shoulders
back, his grave dignity graciously at their service. At their service and
God's.

The sight of her husband inflamed Mrs. Brandon. She stared at him as
though she were seeing him for the first time, but in reality she was not
seeing him as he was now, but rather as he had been that morning bending
over her bed in his shirt and trousers. That movement that he had made as
though he would lift her bodily out of the bed.

She closed her eyes. His fine rich voice came to her from a long way off.
Let him boom as loudly as he pleased, he could not touch her any more. She
had escaped, and for ever. She saw, then, Morris as she had seen him at
that tea-party months ago. She recovered that strange sense that she had
had (and that he had had too, as she knew) of being carried out right away
from one's body into an atmosphere of fire and heat and sudden cold. They
had no more been able to avoid that look that they had exchanged than they
had been able to escape being born. Let it then stay at that. She wanted
nothing more than that. Only that look must be exchanged again. She was
hungry, starving for it. She _must_ see him often, continually. She
must be able to look at him, touch the sleeve of his coat, hear his voice.
She must be able to do things for him, little simple things that no one
else could do. She wanted no more than that. Only to be near to him and to
see that he was cared for...looked after. Surely that was not wrong. No
one could say....

Little shivers ran continually about her body, and her hands, clenched
tightly, were damp within her gloves.

The Precentor gave out the words of the Anthem, "Little children, love one
another."

Every one rose--save Lady St. Leath, who settled herself magnificently in
her seat and looked about her as though she challenged anybody to tell her
that she was wrong to do so.

Yes, that was all Amy Brandon wanted. Who could say that she was wrong to
want it? The little battle was concluded.

Old Canon Foster was preaching to-day. Always at the conclusion of the
Anthem certain ruffians, visitors, tourists, clattered out. No sermon for
them. They did not matter very greatly because they were far away at the
back of the nave, and nobody need look at them; but on Foster's preaching
days certain of the aristocracy also retired, and this was disconcerting
because their seats were prominent ones and their dresses were of silk.
Often Lady St. Leath was one of these, but to-day she was sunk into a kind
of stupor and did not move. Mrs. Combermere, Ellen Stiles and Mrs. Sampson
were the guilty ones.

Rustle of their dresses, the heavy flop of the side Cloister door as it
closed behind them, and then silence once more and the thin angry voice of
Canon Foster, "Let us pray."

Out in the grey Cloisters it was charming. The mild April sun flooded the
square of grass that lay in the middle of the thick rounded pillars like a
floor of bright green glass.

The ladies stood for a moment looking out into the sunny silence. The
Cathedral was hushed behind them; Ellen Stiles was looking very gay and
very hideous in a large hat stifled with flowers, set sideways on her
head, and a bright purple silk dress pulled in tightly at the waist,
rising to high puffed shoulders. Her figure was not suited to the fashion
of the day.

Mrs. Sampson explained that she was suffering from one of the worst of her
nervous headaches and that she could not have endured the service another
moment. Miss Stiles was all eager solicitude.

"I _am_ so sorry. I know how you are when you get one of those
things. Nothing does it any good, does it? I know you've tried everything,
and it simply goes on for days and days, getting worse and worse. And the
really terrible part of them is that, with you, they seem to be
constitutional. No doctors can do anything--when they're constitutional.
There you are for the rest of your days!"

Mrs. Sampson gave a little shiver.

"I must say, Dr. Puddifoot seems to be very little use," she moaned.

"Oh! Puddifoot!" Miss Stiles was contemptuous. "He's past his work. That's
one comfort about this place. If any one's ill he dies. No false hopes. At
least, we know where we are."

They walked through the Martyr's Passage out into the full sunlight of the
Precincts.

"What a jolly day!" said Mrs. Combermere, "I shall take my dogs for a
walk. By the way, Ellen," she turned round to her friend, "how did Miss
Burnett's tea-party go? I haven't seen you since."

"Oh, it was too funny!" Miss Stiles giggled. "You never saw such a
mixture, and I don't think Miss Burnett knew who any one was. Not that she
had much time to think, poor dear, she was so worried with the tea. Such a
maid as she had you never saw!"

"A mixture?" asked Mrs. Combermere. "Who were they?"

"Oh, Canon Ronder and Bentinck-Major and Mrs. Brandon and--Oh, yes!
actually Falk Brandon!"

"Falk Brandon there?"

"Yes, wasn't it the strangest thing. I shouldn't have thought he'd have
had time--However, you told me not to, so I won't--"

"Who did you talk to?"

"I talked to Miss Burnett most of the time. I tried to cheer her up. No
one else paid the least attention to her."

"She's a very stupid person, it seems to me," Mrs. Sampson murmured. "But
of course I know her very slightly."

"Stupid!" Miss Stiles laughed. "Why, she hasn't an idea in her head. I
don't believe that she knows it's Jubilee Year. Positively!"

A little wind blew sportively around Miss Stiles' large hat. They all
moved forward.

"The funny thing was--" Miss Stiles paused and looked apprehensively at
Mrs. Combermere. "I know you don't like scandal, but of course this isn't
scandal--there's nothing in it--"

"Come on, Ellen. Out with it," said Mrs. Combermere.

"Well, Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris. I caught the oddest look between
them."

"Look! What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Combermere sharply. Mrs. Sampson
stood still, her mouth a little open, forgetting her neuralgia.

"Of course it was nothing. All the same, they were standing at the window
saying something, looking at one another, well, positively as though they
had known one another intimately for years. I assure you--"

Mrs. Combermere turned upon her. "Of all the nasty minds in this town,
Ellen, you have the nastiest. I've told you so before. People can't even
look at one another now. Why, you might as well say that I'd been gazing
at your Ronder when he came to tea the other day."

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32