The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

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Now, early in May and in Polchester he was in such a mood. Soon after his
arrival he had discovered that he liked the place and that it promised to
suit him well, but he had never supposed that it could develop into such
perfection. Success already was his, but it was not success of so swift a
kind that plots and plans were not needed. They were very much needed. He
could remember no time in his past life when he had had so admirable a
combination of difficulties to overcome. And they were difficulties of the
right kind. They centred around a figure whom he could really like and
admire. It would have been very unpleasant had he hated Brandon or
despised him. Those were uncomfortable emotions in which he indulged as
seldom as possible.

What he liked, above everything, was a fight, when he need have no
temptation towards anger or bitterness. Who could be angry with poor
Brandon? Nor could he despise him. In his simple blind confidence and
self-esteem there was an element of truth, of strength, even of nobility.

Far from despising or hating Brandon, he liked him immensely--and he was
on his way utterly to destroy him.

Then, as he approached nearer the centre of his drama, he noticed, as he
had often noticed before, how strangely everything played into his hands.
Without undue presumption it seemed that so soon as he determined that
something ought to occur and began to work in a certain direction, God
also decided that it was wise and pushed everything into its right place.
This consciousness of Divine partnership gave Ronder a sense that his
opponents were the merest pawns in a game whose issue was already decided.

Poor things, they were helpless indeed! This only added to his kindly
feelings towards them, his sense of humour, too, was deeply stirred by
their own unawareness of their fate--and he always liked any one who
stirred his sense of humour.

Never before had he known everything to play so immediately into his hands
as in this present case. Brandon, for instance, had just that stupid
obstinacy that was required, the town had just that ignorance of the outer
world and cleaving to old traditions.

And now, how strange that the boy Falk had on several occasions stopped to
speak to him and had at last asked whether he might come and see him!

How lucky that Brandon should be making this mistake about the Pybus St.
Anthony living!

Finally, although he was completely frank with himself and knew that he
was working, first and last, for his own future comfort, it did seem to
him that he was also doing real benefit to the town. The times were
changing. Men of Brandon's type were anachronistic; the town had been
under Brandon's domination too long. New life was coming--a new world--a
new civilisation.

Ronder, although no one believed less in Utopias than he, did believe in
the Zeitgeist--simply for comfort's sake if for no stronger reason. Well,
the Zeitgeist was descending upon Polchester, and Ronder was its agent.
Progress? No, Ronder did not believe in Progress. But in the House of Life
there are many rooms; once and again the furniture is changed.

One afternoon early in May he was suddenly aware that everything was
moving more swiftly upon its appointed course than he, sharp though he
was, had been aware. Crossing the Cathedral Green he encountered Dr.
Puddifoot. He knew that the Doctor had at first disliked him but was
quickly coming over to his side and was beginning to consider him as
"broad-minded for a parson and knowing a lot more about life than you
would suppose." He saw precisely into Puddifoot's brain and watched the
thoughts dart to and fro as though they had been so many goldfish in a
glass bowl. He also liked Puddifoot for himself; he always liked stout,
big, red-faced men; they were easier to deal with than the thin severe
ones. He knew that the time would very shortly arrive when Puddifoot would
tell him one of his improper stories. That would sanctify the friendship.

"Ha! Canon!" said Puddifoot, puffing like a seal. "Jolly day!"

They stood and talked, then, as they were both going into the town, they
turned and walked towards the Arden Gate. Puddifoot talked about his
health; like many doctors he was very timid about himself and eager to
reassure himself in public. "How are you, Canon? But I needn't ask--
looking splendid. I'm all right myself--never felt better really. Just a
twinge of rheumatics last night, but it's nothing. Must expect something
at my age, you know--getting on for seventy."

"You look as though you'll live for ever," said Ronder, beaming upon him.

"You can't always tell from us big fellows. There's Brandon now, for
instance--the Archdeacon."

"Surely there isn't a healthier man in the kingdom," said Ronder, pushing
his spectacles back into the bridge of his nose.

"Think so, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong. A sudden shock, and that man
would be nowhere. Given to fits of anger, always tried his system too
hard, never learnt control. Might have a stroke any day for all he looks
so strong!"

"Really, really! Dear me!" said Ronder.

"Course these are medical secrets in a way. Know it won't go any farther.
But it's curious, isn't it? Appearances are deceptive--damned deceptive.
That's what they are. Brandon's brain's never been his strong point. Might
go any moment."

"Dear me, dear me," said Ronder. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Oh, I don't mean," said Puddifoot, puffing and blowing out his cheeks
like a cherub in a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, "that he'll die to-
morrow, you know--or have a stroke either. But he ain't as secure as he
looks. And he don't take care of himself as he should."

Outside the Library Ronder paused.

"Going in here for a book, doctor. See you later."

"Yes, yes," said Puddifoot, his eyes staring up and down the street, as
though they would burst out of his head. "Very good--very good. See you
later then," and so went blowing down the hill.

Ronder passed under the gloomy portals of the Library and found his way,
through faith rather than vision, up the stone stairs that smelt of mildew
and blotting-paper, into the high dingy room. He had had a sudden desire
the night before to read an old story by Bage that he had not seen since
he was a boy--the violent and melancholy _Hermsprong_.

It had come to him, as it were, in his dreams--a vision of himself rocking
in a hammock in his uncle's garden on a wonderful summer afternoon, eating
apples and reading _Hermsprong_, the book discovered, he knew not by
what chance, in the dusty depths of his uncle's library. He would like to
read it again. _Hermsprong_! the very scent of the skin of the apple,
the blue-necked tapestry of light between the high boughs came back to
him. He was a boy again.... He was brought up sharply by meeting the
little red-rimmed eyes of Miss Milton. Red-rimmed to-day, surely, with
recent weeping. She sat humped up on her chair, glaring out into the room.

"It's all right, Miss Milton," he said, smiling at her. "It's an old book
I want. I won't bother you. I'll look for myself."

He passed into the further dim secrecies of the Library, whither so few
penetrated. Here was an old ladder, and, mounted upon it, he confronted
the vanished masterpieces of Holcroft and Radcliffe, Lewis and Jane
Porter, Clara Reeve and MacKenzie, old calf-bound ghosts who threw up
little clouds of sighing dust as he touched them with his fingers. He was
happily preoccupied with his search, balancing his stout body precariously
on the trembling ladder, when he fancied that he heard a sigh.

He stopped and listened; this time there could be no mistake. It was a
sigh of prodigious intent and meaning, and it came from Miss Milton.
Impatiently he turned back to his books; he would find his Bage as quickly
as possible and go. He was not at all in the mood for lamentations from
Miss Milton. Ah! there was _Barham Downs. Hermsprong_ could not be
far away. Then suddenly there came to him quite unmistakably a sob, then
another, then two more, finally something that horribly resembled
hysterics. He came down from his ladder and crossed the room.

"My dear Miss Milton!" he exclaimed. "Is there anything I can do?"

She presented a strange and unpoetic appearance, huddled up in her wooden
arm-chair, one fat leg crooked under her, her head sinking into her ample
bosom, her whole figure shaking with convulsive grief, the chair creaking
sympathetically with her.

Ronder, seeing that she was in real distress, hurried up to her.

"My dear Miss Milton, what is it?"

For a while she could not speak; then raised a face of mottled purple and
white, and, dabbing her cheeks with a handkerchief not of the cleanest,
choked out between her sobs:

"My last week--Saturday--Saturday I go--disgrace--ugh, ugh--dismissed--
Archdeacon."

"But I don't understand," said Ronder, "who goes? Who's disgraced?"

"I go!" cried Miss Milton, suddenly uncurling her body and her sobs
checked by her anger. "I shouldn't have given way like this, and before
you, Canon Ronder. But I'm ruined--ruined!--and for doing my duty!"

Her change from the sobbing, broken woman to the impassioned avenger of
justice was so immediate that Ronder was confused. "I still don't
understand, Miss Milton," he said. "Do you say you are dismissed, and, if
so, by whom?"

"I _am_ dismissed! I _am_ dismissed!" cried Miss Milton. "I
leave here on Saturday. I have been librarian to this Library, Canon
Ronder, for more than twenty years. Yes, twenty years. And now I'm
dismissed like a dog with a month's notice."

She had collected her tears and, with a marvellous rapidity, packed them
away. Her eyes, although red, were dry and glittering; her cheeks were of
a pasty white marked with small red spots of indignation. Ronder, looking
at her and her dirty hands, thought that he had never seen a woman whom he
disliked more.

"But, Miss Milton," he said, "if you'll forgive me, I still don't
understand. Under whom do you hold this appointment? Who have the right to
dismiss you? and, whoever it was, they must have given some reason."

Miss Milton, was now the practical woman, speaking calmly, although her
bosom still heaved and her fingers plucked confusedly with papers on the
table in front of her. She spoke quietly, but behind her words there were
so vehement a hatred, bitterness and malice that Ronder observed her with
a new interest.

"There is a Library Committee, Canon Ronder," she said. "Lady St. Leath is
the president. It has in its hands the appointment of the librarian. It
appointed me more than twenty years ago. It has now dismissed me with a
month's notice for what it calls--what it _calls_, Canon Ronder--
'abuse and neglect of my duties.' Abuse! Neglect! Me! about whom there has
never been a word of complaint until--until----"

Here again Miss Milton's passions seemed to threaten to overwhelm her. She
gathered herself together with a great effort.

"I know my enemy, Canon Ronder. Make no mistake about that. I know my
enemy. Although, what I have ever done to him I cannot imagine. A more
inoffensive person----"

"Yes.--But," said Canon Ronder gently, "tell me, if you can, exactly with
what they charge you. Perhaps I can help you. Is it Lady St. Leath
who----"

"No, it is _not_ Lady St. Leath," broke in Miss Milton vehemently. "I
owe Lady St. Leath much in the past. If she has been a little imperious at
times, that after all is her right. Lady St. Leath is a perfect lady. What
occurred was simply this: Some months ago I was keeping a book for Lady
St. Leath that she especially wished to read. Miss Brandon, the daughter
of the Archdeacon, came in and tried to take the book from me, saying that
her mother wished to read it. I explained to her that it was being kept
for Lady St. Leath; nevertheless, she persisted and complained to Lord St.
Leath, who happened to be in the Library at the time; he, being a perfect
gentleman, could of course do nothing but say that she was to have the
book.

"She went home and complained, and it was the Archdeacon who brought up
the affair at a Committee meeting and insisted on my dismissal. Yes, Canon
Ronder, I know my enemy and I shall not forget it."

"Dear me," said Canon Ronder benevolently, "I'm more than sorry. Certainly
it sounds a little hasty, although the Archdeacon is the most honourable
of men."

"Honourable! Honourable!" Miss Milton rose in her chair. "Honourable! He's
so swollen with pride that he doesn't know what he is. Oh! I don't measure
my words. Canon Ronder, nor do I see any reason why I should.

"He has ruined my life. What have I now at my age to go to? A little
secretarial work, and less and less of that. But it's not _that_ of
which I complain. I am hurt in the very depths of my being, Canon Ronder.
In my pride and my honour. Stains, wounds that I can never forget!"

It was so exactly as though Miss Milton had just been reading
_Hermsprong_ and was quoting from it that Ronder looked about him,
almost expecting to see the dusty volume.

"Well, Miss Milton, perhaps I can put a little work in your way."

"You're very kind, sir," she said. "There's more than I in this town, sir,
who're glad that you've come among us, and hope that perhaps your presence
may lead to a change some day amongst those in high authority."

"Where are you living, Miss Milton?" he asked.

"Three St. James' Lane," she answered. "Just behind the Market and St.
James' Church. Opposite the Rectory. Two little rooms, my windows looking
on to Mr. Morris'."

"Very well, I'll remember."

"Thank you, sir, I'm sure. I'm afraid I've forgotten myself this morning,
but there's nothing like a sense of injustice for making you lose your
self-control. I don't care who hears me. I shall not forgive the
Archdeacon."

"Come, come, Miss Milton," said Ronder. "We must all forgive and forget."

Her eyes narrowed until they almost disappeared.

"I don't wish to be unfair, Canon Ronder," she said. "But I've worked for
more than twenty years like an honourable woman, and to be turned out.--
Not that I bear Mrs. Brandon any grudge, coming down to see Mr. Morris so
often as she does. I daresay she doesn't have too happy a time if all were
known."

"Now, now," said Ronder. "This won't do, Miss Milton. You won't make your
case better by talking scandal, you know. I have your address. If I can
help you I will. Good afternoon."

Forgetting _Hermsprong_, having now more important things to
consider, he found his way down the steps and out into the air.

On every side now it seemed that the Archdeacon was making some blunder.
Little unimportant blunders perhaps, but nevertheless cumulative in their
effect! The balance had shifted. The Powers of the Air, bored perhaps with
the too-extended spectacle of an Archdeacon successful and triumphant, had
made a sign....

Ronder, as he stood in the spring sunlight, glancing up and down the High
Street, so full of colour and movement, had an impulse as though it were
almost a duty to go and warn the Archdeacon. "Look out! Look out! There's
a storm coming!" Warn the Archdeacon! He smiled. He could imagine to
himself the scene and the reception his advice would have. Nevertheless,
how sad that undoubtedly you cannot make an omelette without first
breaking the eggs! And this omelette positively must be made!

He had intended to do a little shopping, an occupation in which he
delighted because of the personal victories to be won, but suddenly now,
moved by what impulse he could not tell, he turned back towards the
Cathedral. He crossed the Green, and almost before he knew it he had
pushed back the heavy West door and was in the dark, dimly coloured
shadow. The air was chill. The nave was scattered with lozenges of purple
and green light. He moved up the side aisle, thinking that now he was here
he would exchange a word or two with old Lawrence. No harm would be done
by a little casual amiability in that direction.

Before he realised, he was close to the Black Bishop's Tomb. The dark grim
face seemed to-day to wear a triumphant smile beneath the black beard. A
shaft of sunlight played upon the marble like a searchlight upon water;
the gold of the ironwork and the green ring and the tracery on the
scrolled borders jumped under the sunlight like living things.

Ronder, moved as always by beauty, smiled as though in answer to the dead
Bishop.

"Why! you're the most alive thing in this Cathedral," he thought to
himself.

"Pretty good bit of work, isn't it?" he heard at his elbow. He turned and
saw Davray, the painter. The man had been pointed out to him in the
street; he knew his reputation. He was inclined to be interested in the
man, in any one who had a wider, broader view of life than the citizens of
the town. Davray had not been drinking for several weeks; and always
towards the end of one of his sober bouts he was gentle, melancholy, the
true artist in him rising for one last view of the beauty that there was
in the world before the inevitable submerging.

He had, on this occasion, been sober for a longer period than usual; he
felt weak and faint, as though he had been without food, and his favourite
vice, that had been approaching closer and closer to him during these last
days, now leered at him, leaning towards him from the other side of the
gilded scrolls of the tomb.

"Yes, it's a very fine thing." He cleared his throat. "You're Canon
Ronder, are you not?"

"Yes, I am."

"My name's Davray. You probably heard of me as a drunkard who hangs about
the town doing no good. I'm quite sure you don't want to speak to me or
know me, but in here, where it's so quiet and so beautiful, one may know
people whom it wouldn't be nice to know outside."

Ronder looked at him. The man's face, worn now and pinched and sharp, must
once have had its fineness.

"You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Davray," Ronder said. "I'm very glad
indeed to know you."

"Well, of course, you parsons have got to know everybody, haven't you? And
the sinners especially. That's your job. But I'm not a sinner to-day. I
haven't drunk anything for weeks, although don't congratulate me, because
I'm certainly not going to hold out much longer. There's no hope of
redeeming me, Canon Ronder, even if you have time for the job."

Ronder smiled.

"I'm not going to preach to you," he said, "you needn't be afraid."

"Well, let's forget all that. This Cathedral is the very place, if you
clergymen had any sense of proportion, where you should be ashamed to
preach. It laughs at you."

"At any rate the Bishop does," said Render, looking down at the tomb.

"No, but all of it," said Davray. Instinctively they both looked up. High
above them, in the very heart of the great Cathedral tower, a mist,
reflected above the windows until it was coloured a very faint rose,
trembled like a sea about the black rafters and rounded pillars. Even as
they looked some bird flew twittering from corner to corner.

"When I'm worked up," said Davray, "which I'm not to-day, I just long to
clear all you officials out of it. I laugh sometimes to think how
important you think yourselves and how unimportant you really are. The
Cathedral laughs too, and once and again stretches out a great lazy finger
and just flicks you away as it would a spider's web. I hope you don't
think me impertinent."

"Not in the least," said Ronder; "some of us even may feel just as you do
about it."

"Brandon doesn't." Davray moved away. "I sometimes think that when I'm
properly drunk one day I'll murder that man. His self-sufficiency and
conceit are an insult to the Cathedral. But the Cathedral knows. It bides
its time."

Ronder looked gravely at the melancholy, ineffective figure with the pale
pointed beard, and the weak hands. "You speak very confidently, Mr.
Davray," he said. "As with all of us, you judge others by yourself. When
you know what the Cathedral's attitude to yourself is, you'll be able to
see more clearly."

"To myself!" Davray answered excitedly. "It has none! To myself? Why, I'm
nobody, nothing. It doesn't have to begin to consider me. I'm less than
the dung the birds drop from the height of the tower. But I'm humble
before it. I would let its meanest stone crush the life out of my body,
and be glad enough. At least I know its power, its beauty. And I adore it!
I adore it!"

He looked up as he spoke; his eyes seemed to be eagerly searching for some
expected face.

Ronder disliked both melodrama and sentimentality. Both were here.

"Take my advice," he said smiling. "Don't think too much about the
place...I'm glad that we met. Good afternoon."

Davray did not seem to have noticed him; he was staring down again at the
Bishop's Tomb. Ronder walked away. A strange man! A strange day! How
different people were! Neither better nor worse, but just different. As
many varieties as there were particles of sand on the seashore.

How impossible to be bored with life. Nevertheless, entering his own home
he was instantly bored. He found there, having tea with his aunt and
sitting beneath the Hermes, so that the contrast made her doubly
ridiculous, Julia Preston. Julia Preston was to him the most boring woman
in Polchester. To herself she was the most important. She was a widow and
lived in a little green house with a little green garden in the Polchester
outskirts. She was as pretty as she had been twenty years before, exactly
the same, save that what nature had, twenty years ago, done for the
asking, it now did under compulsion. She believed the whole world in love
with her and was therefore a thoroughly happy woman. She had a healthy
interest in the affairs of her neighbours, however small they might be,
and believed in "Truth, Beauty, and the Improvement of the Lower Classes."

"Dear Canon Ronder, how nice this is!" she exclaimed. "You've been hard at
work all the afternoon, I know, and want your tea. How splendid work is! I
often think what would life be without it'."

Ronder, who took trouble with everybody, smiled, sat down near to her and
looked as though he loved her.

"Well, to be quite honest, I haven't been working very hard. Just seeing a
few people."

"Just seeing a few people!" Mrs. Preston used a laugh that was a favourite
of hers because she had once been told that it was like "a tinkling bell."
"Listen to him! As though that weren't the hardest thing in the world.
Giving out! Giving out! What is so exhausting, and yet what so worth while
in the end? Unselfishness! I really sometimes feel that is the true secret
of life."

"Have one of those little cakes, Julia," said Miss Ronder drily. She,
unlike her nephew, bothered about very few people indeed. "Make a good
tea."

"I will, as you want me to, dear Alice," said Mrs. Preston. "Oh, thank
you, Canon Ronder! How good of you; ah, there! I've dropped my little bag.
It's under that table. Thank you a thousand times! And isn't it strange
about Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris?"

"Isn't what strange?" asked Miss Ronder, regarding her guest with grim
cynicism.

"Oh well--nothing really, except that every one's asking what they can
find in common. They're always together. Last Monday Aggie Combermere met
her coming out of the Rectory, then Ellen Stiles saw them in the Precincts
last Sunday afternoon, and I saw them myself this morning in the High
Street."

"My dear Mrs. Preston," said Ronder, "why _shouldn't_ they go about
together?"

"No reason at all," said Mrs. Preston, blushing very prettily, as she
always did when she fancied that any one was attacking her. "I'm sure that
I'm only too glad that poor Mrs. Brandon has found a friend. My motto in
life is, 'Let us all contribute to the happiness of one another to the
best of our strength.'

"Truly, that's a thing we can _all_ do, isn't it? Life isn't too
bright for some people, I can't help thinking. And courage is the thing.
After all, it isn't life that is important but simply how brave you are.

"At least that's my poor little idea of it. But it does seem a little odd
about Mrs. Brandon. She's always kept so much to herself until now."

"You worry too much about others, dear Julia," said Miss Ronder.

"Yes, I really believe I do. Why, there's my bag gone again! Oh, how good
of you, Canon! It's under that chair. Yes. I do. But one can't help one's
nature, can one? I often tell myself that it's really no credit to me
being unselfish. I was simply born that way. Poor Jack used to say that he
wished I _would_ think of myself more! I think we were meant to share
one another's burdens. I really do. And what Mrs. Brandon can see in Mr.
Morris is so odd, because _really_ he isn't an interesting man."

"Let me get you some more tea," said Ronder.

"No, thank you. I really must be going. I've been here an unconscionable
time. Oh! there's my handkerchief. How silly of me! Thank you so much!"

She got up and prepared to depart, looking so pretty and so helpless that
it was really astonishing that the Hermes did not appreciate her.

"Good-bye, dear Canon. No, I forbid you to come out. Oh, well, if you
will. I hear everywhere of the splendid work you're doing. Don't think it
flattery, but I do think we needed you here. What we have wanted is a
message--something to lift us all up a little. It's so easy to see nothing
but the dreary round, isn't it? And all the time the stars are shining....
At least that's how it seems to me."

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