The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

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In the last weeks she had grown so regardless of the town's opinion that
she did not care how many people saw her pass Morris' door. She had,
perhaps, been always regardless, only in the dull security of her life
there had been no need to regard them. She despised them all; she had
always despised them, for the deference and admiration that they paid her
husband if for no other reason. Despised them too, it might be, because
they had not seen more in herself, had thought her the dull, lifeless
nonentity in whose soul no fires had ever burned.

She had never chattered nor gossiped with them, did not consider gossip a
factor in any one's, day; she had never had the least curiosity about any
one else, whether about life or character or motive.

There is no egoist in the world so complete as the disappointed woman
without imagination.

She hurried through the town as though she were on a business of the
utmost urgency; she saw nothing and she heard nothing. She did not even
see Miss Milton sitting at her half-opened window enjoying the evening
air.

Morris himself opened the door. He was surprised when he saw her; when he
had closed the door and helped her off with her coat he said as they
walked into the drawing-room:

"Is there anything the matter?"

She saw at once that the room was cheerless and deserted.

"Is Miss Burnett here?" she asked.

"No. She went off to Rafiel for a week's holiday. I'm being looked after
by the cook."

"It's cold." She drew her shoulders and arms together, shivering.

"Yes. It _is_ cold. It's these showers. Shall I light the fire?"

"Yes, do."

He bent down, putting a match to the paper; then when the fire blazed he
pushed the sofa forwards.

"Now sit down and tell me what's the matter."

She could see that he was extremely nervous.

"Have you heard nothing?"

"No."

She laughed bitterly. "I thought all the town knew by this time."

"Knew what?"

"Falk has run away to London with the daughter of Samuel Hogg."

"Samuel Hogg?"

"Yes, the man of the 'Dog and Pilchard' down in Seatown."

"Run away with her?"

"Yesterday. He sent us a letter saying that he had gone up to London to
earn his own living, had taken this girl with him, and would marry her
next week."

Morris was horrified.

"Without a word of warning? Without speaking to you? Horrible! The
daughter of that man.... I know something about him...the worst man in the
place."

Then followed a long silence. The effect on Morris was as it had been on
Mrs. Brandon--the actual deed was almost lost sight of in the sudden light
that it threw on his passion. From the very first the most appealing
element of her attraction to him had been her loneliness, the neglect from
which she suffered, the need she had of comfort.

He saw her as a woman who, for twenty years, had had no love, although in
her very nature she had hungered for it; and if she had not been treated
with actual cruelty, at least she had been so basely neglected that
cruelty was not far away. It was not true to say that during these months
he had grown to hate Brandon, but he had come, more and more, to despise
and condemn him. The effeminacy in his own nature had from the first both
shrunk from and been attracted by the masculinity in Brandon.

He could have loved that man, but as the situation had forbidden that, his
feeling now was very near to hate.

Then, as the weeks had gone by, Mrs. Brandon had made it clear enough to
him that Falk was all that she had left to her--not very much to her even
there, perhaps, but something to keep her starved heart from dying. And
now Falk was gone, gone in the most brutal, callous way. She had no one in
the world left to her but himself. The rush of tenderness and longing to
be good to her that now overwhelmed him was so strong and so sudden that
it was with the utmost difficulty that he had held himself from going to
the sofa beside her.

She looked so weak there, so helpless, so gentle.

"Amy," he said, "I will do anything in the world that is in my power."

She was trembling, partly with genuine emotion, partly with cold, partly
with the drama of the situation.

"No," she said, "I don't want to do a thing that's going to involve you.
You must be left out of this. It is something that I must carry through by
myself. It was wrong of me, I suppose, to come to you, but my first
thought was that I must have companionship. I was selfish----"

"No," he broke in, "you were not selfish. I am prouder that you came to me
than I can possibly say. That is what I'm here for. I'm your friend. You
know, after all these months, that I am. And what is a friend for?" Then,
as though he felt that he was advancing too dangerously close to emotion,
he went on more quietly:

"Tell me--if it isn't impertinent of me to ask--what is your husband doing
about it?"

"Doing? Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"No. I thought that he would go up to London and see Falk, but he doesn't
feel that that is necessary. He says that, as Falk has run away with the
girl, the most decent thing that he can do is to marry her. He seems very
little upset by it. He is a most curious man. After all these years, I
don't understand him at all."

Morris went on hesitatingly. "I feel guilty myself. Weeks ago I overheard
gossip about your son and some girl. I wondered then whether I ought to
say something to you. But it's so difficult in these cases to know what
one ought to do. There's so much gossip in these little Cathedral towns. I
thought about it a good deal. Finally, I decided that it wasn't my place
to meddle."

"I heard nothing," she answered. "It's always the family that hears the
talk last. Perhaps my husband's right. Perhaps there is nothing to be
done. I see now that Falk never cared anything for any of us. I cheated
myself. I had to cheat myself, otherwise I don't know what I'd have done.
And now his doing this has made me suspicious of everything and of every
one. Yes, even of a friendship like ours--the greatest thing in my life--
now--the only thing in my life."

Her voice trembled and dropped. But still he would not let himself pass on
to that other ground. "Is there _nothing_ I can do?" he asked. "I
suppose it would do no good if I were to go up to London and see him? I
knew him a little--"

Vehemently she shook her head.

"You're not to be involved in this. At least I can do that much--keep you
out of it."

"How is he going to live, then?"

"He talks about writing. He's utterly confident, of course. He always has
been. Looking back now, I despise myself for ever imagining that _I_
was of any use to him. I see now that he never needed me--never at all."

Suddenly she looked across at him sharply.

"How is your sister-in-law?" His colour rose.

"My sister-in-law?"

"Yes."

"She isn't well."

"What--?"

"It's hard to say. The doctor looked at her and said she needed quiet and
must go to the sea. It's her nerves."

"Her nerves?"

"Yes, they got very queer. She's been sleeping badly."

"You quarrelled."

"She and I?--yes."

"What about?"

"Oh, I don't know. She's getting a little too much for me, I think."

She looked him in the face.

"No, you know it isn't that. You quarrelled about me."

He said nothing.

"You quarrelled about me," she repeated. "She always disliked me from the
beginning."

"No."

"Oh, yes, she did. Of course I saw that. She was jealous of me. She saw,
more quickly than any one else, how much--how much we were going to mean
to one another. Speak the truth. You know that is the best."

"She didn't understand," Morris answered slowly. "She's stupid in some
things."

"So I've been the cause of your quarrelling, of your losing the only
friend you had in your life?"

"No, not of my losing it. I haven't lost her. Our relationship has
shifted, that's all."

"No. No. I know it is so. I've taken away the only person near you."

And suddenly turning from him to the back of the sofa, hiding her face in
her hands, she broke into passionate crying.

He stood for a moment, taut, controlled, as though he was fighting his
last little desperate battle. Then he was beaten. He knelt down on the
floor beside the sofa. He touched her hair, then her cheek. She made a
little movement towards him. He put his arms around her.

"Don't cry. Don't cry. I can't bear that. You mustn't say that you've
taken anything from me. It isn't true. You've given me everything...
everything. Why should we struggle any longer? Why shouldn't we take what
has been given to us? Your husband doesn't care. I haven't anybody. Has
God given me so much that I should miss this? And has He put it in our
hearts if He didn't mean us to take it? I love you. I've loved you since
first I set eyes on you. I can't keep away from you any longer. It's
keeping away from myself. We're one. We are one another--not alone,
either of us--any more...."

She turned towards him. He drew her closer and closer to him. With a
little sigh of happiness and comfort she yielded to him.

* * * * *

There was only one cloud in the dim green sky, a cloud orange and crimson,
shaped like a ship. As the sun was setting, a little wind stirred, the
faint aftermath of the storm of the day, and the cloud, now all crimson,
passed over the town and died in fading ribbons of gold and orange in the
white sky of the far horizon.

Only Miss Milton, perhaps, among all the citizens of the town, waiting
patiently behind her open window, watched its career.

Chapter IX

The Quarrel

Every one has known, at one time or another in life, that strange
unexpected calm that always falls like sudden snow on a storm-tossed
country, after some great crisis or upheaval. The blow has seemed so
catastrophic that the world must be changed with the force of its fall--
but the world is _not_ changed; hours pass and days go by, and no one
seems to be aware that anything has occurred...it is only when months
have gone, and perhaps years, that one looks back and sees that it was,
after all, on such and such a day that life was altered, values shifted,
the face of the world turned to a new angle.

This is platitudinous, but platitudes are not platitudes when we first
make our personal experience of them. There seemed nothing platitudinous
to Brandon in his present experiences. The day on which he had received
Falk's letter had seemed to fling him neck and crop into a new world--a
world dim and obscure and peopled with new and terrifying devils. The
morning after, he was clear again, and it was almost as though nothing at
all had occurred. He went about the town, and everybody behaved in a
normal manner. No sign of those strange menacing figures, the drunken
painter, the sinister, smiling Hogg; every one as usual.

Ryle complacent and obedient; Bentinck-Major officious but subservient;
Mrs. Combermere jolly; even, as he fancied, Foster a little more amiable
than usual. It was for this open, outside world that he had now for many
years been living; it was not difficult to tell himself that things here
were unchanged. Because he was no psychologist, he took people as he found
them; when they smiled they were pleased and when they frowned they were
angry.

Because there was a great deal of pressing business he pushed aside Falk's
problem. It was there, it was waiting for him, but perhaps time would
solve it.

He concentrated himself with a new energy, a new self-confidence, upon
the Cathedral, the Jubilee, the public life of the town.

Nevertheless, that horrible day had had its effect upon him. Three days
after Falk's escape he was having breakfast alone with Joan.

"Mother has a headache," Joan said. "She's not coming down."

He nodded, scarcely looking up from his paper.

In a little while she said: "What are you doing to-day, daddy? I'm very
sorry to bother you, but I'm housekeeping to-day, and I have to arrange
about meals----"

"I'm lunching at Carpledon," he said, putting his paper down.

"With the Bishop? How nice! I wish I were. He's an old dear."

"He wants to consult me about some of the Jubilee services," Brandon said
in his public voice.

"Won't Canon Ryle mind that?"

"I don't care if he does. It's his own fault, for not managing things
better."

"I think the Bishop must be very lonely out there. He hardly ever comes
into Polchester now. It's because of his rheumatism, I suppose. Why
doesn't he resign, daddy?"

"He's wanted to, a number of times. But he's very popular. People don't
want him to go."

"I don't wonder." Joan's eyes sparkled. "Even if one never saw him at all
it would be better than somebody else. He's _such_ an old darling."

"Well, I don't believe myself in men going on when they're past their
work. However, I hear he's going to insist on resigning at the end of this
year."

"How old is he, daddy?"

"Eighty-seven."

There was always a tinge of patronage in the Archdeacon's voice when he
spoke of his Bishop. He knew that he was a saint, a man whose life had
been of so absolute a purity, a simplicity, an unfaltering faith and
courage, that there were no flaws to be found in him anywhere. It was
possibly this very simplicity that stirred Brandon's patronage. After all,
we were living in a workaday world, and the Bishop's confidence in every
man's word and trust in every man's honour had been at times a little
ludicrous. Nevertheless, did any one dare to attack the Bishop, he was
immediately his most ardent and ferocious defender.

It was only when the Bishop was praised that he felt that a word or two of
caution was necessary.

However, he was just now not thinking of the Bishop; he was thinking of
his daughter. As he looked across the table at her he wondered. What had
Falk's betrayal of the family meant to her? Had she been fond of him? She
had given no sign at all as to how it had affected her. She had her
friends and her life in the town, and her family pride like the rest of
them. How pretty she looked this morning! He was suddenly aware of the
love and devotion that she had given him for years and the small return
that he had made. Not that he had been a bad father--he hurriedly
reassured himself; no one could accuse him of that. But he had been busy,
preoccupied, had not noticed her as he might have done. She was a woman
now, with a new independence and self-assurance! And yet such a child at
the same time! He recalled the evening in the cab when she had held his
hand. How few demands she ever made upon him; how little she was ever in
the way!

He went back to his paper, but found that he could not fix his attention
upon it. When he had finished his breakfast he went across to her. She
looked up at him, smiling. He put his hand on her shoulder.

"Um--yes.... And what are you going to do to-day, dear?"

"I've heaps to do. There's the Jubilee work-party in the morning. Then
there are one or two things in the town to get for mother." She paused.

He hesitated, then said:

"Has any one--have your friends in the town--said anything about Falk?"

She looked up at him.

"No, daddy--not a word."

Then she added, as though to herself, with a little sigh, "Poor Falk!"

He took his hand from her shoulder.

"So you're sorry for him, are you?" he said angrily.

"Not sorry, exactly," she answered slowly. "But--you will forgive him,
won't you?"

"You can be sure," Brandon said, "that I shall do what is right."

She sprang up and faced him.

"Daddy, now that Falk is gone, it's more necessary than ever for you to
realise _me_."

"Realise you?" he said, looking at her.

"Yes, that I'm a woman now and not a child any longer. You don't realise
it a bit. I said it to mother months ago, and told her that now I could do
all sorts of things for her. She _has_ let me do a few things, but
she hasn't changed to me, not been any different, or wanted me any more
than she did before. But you must. You _must_, daddy. I can help you
in lots of ways. I can----"

"What ways?" he asked her, smiling.

"I don't know. You must find them out. What I mean is that you've got to
count on me as an element in the family now. You can't disregard me any
more."

"Have I disregarded you?"

"Of course you have," she answered, laughing.

"Well, we'll see," he said. He bent down and kissed her, then left the
room.

He left to catch the train to Carpledon in a self-satisfied mind. He was
tired, certainly, and had felt ever since the shock of three days back a
certain "warning" sensation that hovered over him rather like hot air,
suggesting that sudden agonizing pain...but so long as the pain did not
come...He had thought, half derisively, of seeing old Puddifoot, even of
having himself overhauled--but Puddifoot was an ass. How could a man who
talked the nonsense Puddifoot did in the Conservative Club be anything of
a doctor? Besides, the man was old. There was a young man now, Newton. But
Brandon distrusted young men.

He was amused and pleased at the station. He strode up and down the
platform, his hands behind his broad back, his head up, his top-hat
shining, his gaiters fitting superbly his splendid calves. The station-
master touched his hat, smiled, and stayed for a word or two. Very
deferential. Good fellow, Curtis. Knew his business. The little, stout,
rosy-faced fellow who guarded the book-stall touched his hat. Brandon
stopped and looked at the papers. Advertisements already of special
Jubilee supplements--"Life of the Good Queen," "History of the Empire,
1837-1897." Piles of that trashy novel Joan had been talking about, _The
Massarenes_, by Ouida. Pah! Stuff and nonsense. How did people have
time for such things? "Yes, Mr. Waller. Fine day. Very fine May we're
having. Ought to be fine for the Jubilee. Hope so, I'm sure. Disappoint
many people if it's wet...."

He bought the _Church Times_ and crossed to the side-line. No one
here but a farmer, a country-woman and her little boy. The farmer's side-
face reminded him suddenly of some one. Who was it? That fat cheek, the
faint sandy hair beneath the shabby bowler. He was struck as though,
standing on a tight-rope in mid-air, he felt it quiver beneath him.
Hogg.... He turned abruptly and faced the empty line and the dusty
neglected boarding of a railway-shed. He must not think of that man, must
not allow him to seize his thoughts. Hogg--Davray. Had he dreamt that
horrible scene in the Cathedral? Could that have been? He lifted his hand
and, as it were, tore the scene into pieces and scattered it on the line.
He had command of his thoughts, shutting down one little tight shutter
after another upon the things he did not want to see. _That_ he did
not want to see, did not want to know.

The little train drew in, slowly, regretfully. Brandon got into the
solitary first-class carriage and buried himself in his paper. Soon,
thanks to his happy gift of attending only to one question at a time, the
subjects that that paper brought up for discussion completely absorbed
him. Anything more absurd than such an argument!--as though the validity
of Baptism did not absolutely depend...

He was happily lost; the little train steamed out. He saw nothing of the
beautiful country through which they passed--country, on this May
morning, so beautiful in its rich luxuriant security, the fields bending
and dipping to the tree-haunted streams, the hedges running in lines of
blue and dark purple like ribbons to the sky, that, blue-flecked, caught
in light and shadow a myriad pattern as a complement to its own sun-warmed
clouds. Rich and English so utterly that it was almost scornful in its
resentment of foreign interference. In spite of the clouds the air was now
in its mid-day splendour, and the cows, in clusters of brown, dark and
clay-red, sought the cool grey shadows of the hedges.

The peace of centuries lay upon this land, and the sun with loving hands
caressed its warm flanks as though here, at least, was some one of whom it
might be sure, some one known from old time.

The little station at Carpledon was merely a wooden shed. Woods running
down the hill threatened to overwhelm it; at its very edge beyond the
line, thick green fields slipped to the shining level waters of the Pol.
Brandon walked up the hill through the wood, past the hedge and on through
the Park to the Palace drive. The sight of that old, red, thick-set
building with its square comfortable windows, its bell-tower, its
dovecots, its graceful, stolid, happy lines, its high old doorway, its
tiled roof rosy-red with age, respectability and comfort, its square
solemn chimneys behind and between whose self-possession the broad
branches of the oaks, older and wiser than the house itself, uplifted
their clustered leaves with the protection of their conscious dignity--
this house thrilled all that was deepest and most superstitious in his
soul.

To this building he would bow, to this house surrender. Here was something
that would command all his reverence, a worthy adjunct to the Cathedral
that he loved; without undue pride he must acknowledge to himself that,
had fate so willed it, he would himself have occupied this place with a
worthy and fitting appropriateness. It seemed, indeed, as he pulled the
iron bell and heard its clang deep within the house, that he understood
what it needed so well that it must sigh with a dignified relief when it
saw him approach.

Appleford the butler, who opened the door, was an old friend of his--an
aged, white-locked man, but dignity itself.

"His lordship will be down in a moment," he said, showing him into the
library. Some one else was there, his back to the door. He turned round;
it was Ronder.

When Brandon saw him he had again that sense that came now to him so
frequently, that some plot was in process against him and gradually, step
by step, hedging him in. That is a dangerous sense for any human being to
acquire, but most especially for a man of Brandon's simplicity, almost
naïveté of character.

Ronder! The very last man whom Brandon could bear to see in that place and
at that time! Brandon's visit to-day was not entirely unengineered. To be
honest, he had not spoken quite the truth to his daughter when he had said
that the Bishop had asked him out there for consultation. Himself had
written to the Bishop a very strong letter, emphasising the inadequacy
with which his Jubilee services were being prepared, saying something
about the suitability of Forsyth for the Pybus living, and hinting at
certain carelessnesses in the Chapter "due to new and regrettable
influences." It was in answer to this letter that Ponting, the Resident
Chaplain, had written saying that the Bishop would like to give Brandon
luncheon. It may be said, therefore, that Brandon wished to consult the
Bishop rather than the Bishop Brandon. The Archdeacon had pictured to
himself a cosy _tête-à-tête_ with the Bishop lasting for an hour or
two, and entirely uninterrupted. He flattered himself that he knew his
dear Bishop well enough by this time to deal with him exactly as he ought
to be dealt with. But, for that dealing, privacy was absolutely essential.
Any third person would have been, to the last extent, provoking. Ronder
was disastrous. He instantly persuaded himself, as he looked at that
rubicund and smiling figure, that Ronder had heard of his visit and
determined to be one of the party. He could only have heard of it through
Ponting.... The Archdeacon's fingers twisted within one another as he
considered how pleasant it would be to wring Ponting's long, white and
ecclesiastical neck.

And, of course, behind all this immediate situation was his sense of the
pleasure and satisfaction that Ronder must be feeling about Falk's
scandal. Licking his thick red lips about it, he must be, watching with
his little fat eyes for the moment when, with his round fat fingers, he
might probe that wound.

Nevertheless the Archdeacon knew, by this time, Ronder's character and
abilities too well not to realise that he must dissemble. Dissembling was
the hardest thing of all that a man of the Archdeacon's character could be
called upon to perform, but dissemble he must.

His smile was of a grim kind.

"Ha! Ronder; didn't expect to see you here."

"No," said Ronder, coming forward and smiling with the utmost geniality.
"To tell you the truth, I didn't expect to find myself here. It was only
last evening that I got a note from the Bishop asking me to come out to
luncheon to-day. He said that you would be here."

Oh, so Ponting was not to blame. It was the Bishop himself. Poor old man!
Cowardice obviously, afraid of some of the home-truths that Brandon might
find it his duty to deliver. A coward in his old age....

"Very fine day," said Brandon.

"Beautiful," said Ronder. "Really, looks as though we are going to have
good weather for the Jubilee."

"Hope we do," said Brandon. "Very hard on thousands of people if it's
wet."

"Very," said Ronder. "I hope Mrs. Brandon is well."

"To-day she has a little headache," said Brandon. "But it's really
nothing."

"Well," said Ronder. "I've been wondering whether there isn't some thunder
in the air. I've been feeling it oppressive myself."

"It does get oppressive," said Brandon, "this time of the year in
Glebeshire--especially South Glebeshire. I've often noticed it."

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