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The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

H >> Hugh Walpole >> The Cathedral




Destruction? That is, perhaps, too strong a word. We know that that is
simply the stepping from one stage to another of the eternal, the immortal
cycle. The little hamlet embowered in its protecting trees, defended by
its beloved hills, the Rock rising gaunt and naked in its midst; then the
Cathedral, the Monks, the Baron's Castle, the feudal rule; then the mighty
Bishops and the vast all-encircling power of the Church; then the new
merchant age, the Elizabethan salt of adventure; then the cosy seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, with their domesticities, their little cultures,
their comfortable religion, their stay-at-home unimaginative festivities.

Throughout the nineteenth century that spirit lingers, gently repulsing
the outside world, reproving new doctrine, repressing new movement...and
the Rock and the Cathedral wait their hours, watching the great sea that,
far on the horizon, is bathing its dykes and flooding the distant fields,
knowing that the waves are rising higher and higher, and will at last,
with full volume, leap upon these little pastures, these green-clad
valleys, these tiny hills. And in that day only the Cathedral and the Rock
will stand out above the flood.

And this was a Polchester Jubilee. There may have been some consciousness
of that little old woman driving in her carriage through the London
streets, but in the main the Town suddenly took possession, cried aloud
that these festivities were for Herself, that for a week at least the Town
would assert Herself, bringing into Her celebration the Cathedral that was
her chief glory, but of whom, nevertheless, she was afraid; the Rock upon
which she was built, that never changed, the country that surrounded and
supported her, the wild men who had belonged to her from time immemorial,
the River that encircled her.

That week seemed to many, on looking back, a strangely mad time, days
informed with a wildness for which there was no discernible reason--men
and women and children were seized that week with some licence that they
loved while it lasted, but that they looked back upon with fear when it
was over. What had come over them? Who had been grinning at them?

The strange things that occurred that week seemed to have no individual
agent. No one was responsible. But life, after that week, was for many
people in the town never quite the same again.

On the afternoon of Thursday, June 17, Ronder stood at the window of his
study and looked down upon the little orchard, the blazing flowers, the
red garden-wall, and the tree-tops on the descending hill, all glazed and
sparkling under the hot afternoon sun. As he looked down, seeing nothing,
sunk deeply in his own thoughts, he was aware of extreme moral and
spiritual discomfort. He moved back from the window, making with his
fingers a little gesture of discontent and irritation. He paced his room,
stopping absent-mindedly once and again to push in a book that protruded
from the shelves, staying to finger things on his writing-table, jolting
against a chair with his foot as he moved. At last he flung himself into
his deep leather chair and stared fixedly at an old faded silk fire-guard,
with its shadowy flowers and dim purple silk, seeing it not at all.

He was angry, and of all things in the world that he hated, he hated most
to be that. He had been angry now for several weeks, and, as though it had
been a heavy cold that had descended upon him, he woke up every morning
expecting to find that his anger had departed--but it had not departed; it
showed no signs whatever of departing.

As he sat there he was not thinking of the Jubilee, the one thought at
that time of every living soul in Polchester, man, woman and child--he was
thinking of no one but Brandon, with whom, to his own deep disgust, he was
at last implacably, remorselessly, angry. How many years ago now he had
decided that anger and hatred were emotions that every wise man, at all
cost to his pride, his impatience, his self-confidence, avoided.
Everything could be better achieved without these weaknesses, and for many
years he had tutored and trained himself until, at last, he had reached
this fine height of superiority. From that height he had suddenly fallen.

It was now three weeks since that luncheon at Carpledon, and in one way or
another the quarrel on the road home--the absurd and ludicrous quarrel--
had become known to the whole town. Had Brandon revealed it? Or possibly
the coachman? Whoever it was, every one now knew and laughed. Laughed! It
was that for which Ronder would never forgive Brandon. The man with his
childish temper and monstrous conceit had made him into a ludicrous
figure. It was true that they were laughing, it seemed, more at Brandon
than at himself, but the whole scene was farcical. But beyond this, that
incident, trivial though it might be in itself, had thrown the
relationship of the two men into dazzling prominence. It was as though
they had been publicly announced as antagonists, and now, stripped and
prepared, ringed in by the breathless Town, must vulgarly afford the
roughs of the place the fistic exhibition of their lives. It was the
publicity that Ronder detested. He had not disliked Brandon--he had merely
despised him, and he had taken an infinite pleasure in furthering schemes
and ambitions, a little underground maybe, but all for the final benefit
of the Town.

And now the blundering fool had brought this blaze down upon them, was
indeed rushing round and screaming at his antagonist, shouting to any one
who would hear that Ronder was a blackguard and a public menace. It had
been whispered--from what source again Ronder did not know--that it was
through Ronder's influence that young Falk Brandon had run off to Town
with Hogg's daughter. The boy thought the world of Ronder, it was said,
and had been to see him and ask his advice. Ronder knew that Brandon had
heard this story and was publicly declaring that Ronder had ruined his
son.

Finally the two men were brought into sharp rivalry over the Pybus living.
Over that, too, the town, or at any rate the Cathedral section of it, was
in two camps. Here, too, Brandon's vociferous publicity had made privacy
impossible.

Ronder was ashamed, as though his rotund body had been suddenly exposed in
all its obese nakedness before the assembled citizens of Polchester. In
this public quarrel he was not in his element; forces were rising in him
that he distrusted and feared.

People were laughing...for that he would never forgive Brandon so long
as he lived.

On this particular afternoon he was about to close the window and try to
work at his sermon when some one knocked at his door.

"Come in," he said impatiently. The maid appeared.

"Please, sir, there's some one would like to speak to you."

"Who is it?"

"She gave her name as Miss Milton, sir."

He paused, looking down at his papers. "She said she wouldn't keep you
more than a moment, sir."

"Very well. I'll see her."

Fate pushing him again. Why should this woman come to him? How could any
one say that any of the steps that he had taken in this affair had been
his fault? Why, he had had nothing whatever to do with them!

The sight of Miss Milton in his doorway filled him with the same vague
disgust that he had known on the earlier occasions at the Library. To-day
she was wearing a white cotton dress, rather faded and crumpled, and grey
silk gloves; in one of the fingers there was a hole. She carried a pink
parasol, and wore a large straw hat overtrimmed with roses. Her face with
its little red-rimmed eyes, freckled and flushed complexion, her clumsy
thick-set figure, fitted ill with her youthful dress.

It was obvious enough that fate had not treated her well since her
departure from the Library; she was running to seed very swiftly, and was
herself bitterly conscious of the fact.

Ronder, looking at her, was aware that it was her own fault that it was
so. She was incompetent, utterly incompetent. He had, as he had promised,
given her some work to do during these last weeks, come copying, some
arranging of letters, and she had mismanaged it all. She was a muddle-
headed, ill-educated, careless, conceited and self-opinionated woman, and
it did not make it any the pleasanter for Ronder to be aware, as he now
was, that Brandon had been quite right to dismiss her from her Library
post which she had retained far too long.

She looked across the room at him with an expression of mingled obstinacy
and false humility. Her eyes were nearly closed.

"Good-afternoon, Canon Ronder," she said. "It is very good of you to see
me. I shall not detain you very long."

"Well, what is it, Miss Milton?" he said, looking over his shoulder at
her. "I am very busy, as a matter of fact. All these Jubilee affairs--
however, if I can help you."

"You can help me, sir. It is a most serious matter, and I need your
advice."

"Well, sit down there and tell me about it."

The sun was beating into the room. He went across and pulled down the
blind, partly because it was hot and partly because Miss Milton was less
unpleasant in shadow.

Miss Milton seemed to find it hard to begin. She gulped in her throat and
rubbed her silk gloves nervously against one another.

"I daresay I've done wrong in this matter," she began--"many would think
so. But I haven't come here to excuse myself. If I've done wrong, there
are others who have done more wrong--yes, indeed."

"Please come to the point," said Ronder impatiently.

"I will, sir. That is my desire. Well, you must know, sir, that after my
most unjust dismissal from the Library I took a couple of rooms with Mrs.
Bassett who lets rooms, as perhaps you know, sir, just opposite St. James'
Rectory, Mr. Morris's."

"Well?" said Ronder.

"Well, sir, I had not been there very long before Mrs. Bassett herself,
who is the least interfering and muddling of women, drew my attention to a
curious fact, a most curious fact."

Miss Milton paused, looking down at her lap and at a little shabby black
bag that lay upon it.

"Well?" said Ronder again.

"This fact was that Mrs. Brandon, the wife of Archdeacon Brandon, was in
the habit of coming every day to see Mr. Morris!"

Ronder got up from his chair.

"Now, Miss Milton," he said, "let me make myself perfectly clear. If you
have come here to give me a lot of scandal about some person, or persons,
in this town, I do not wish to hear it. You have come to the wrong place.
I wonder, indeed, that you should care to acknowledge to any one that you
have been spying at your window on the movements of some people here. That
is a disgraceful action. I do not think there is any need for this
conversation to continue."

"Excuse me, Canon Ronder, there _is_ need." Miss Milton showed no
intention whatever of moving from her chair. "I was aware that you would,
in all probability, rebuke me for what I have done. I expected that. At
the same time I may say that I was _not_ spying in any sense of the
word. I could not help it if the windows of my sitting-room looked down
upon Mr. Morris's house. You could not expect me, in this summer weather,
not to sit at my window.

"At the same time, if these visits of Mrs. Brandon's were all that had
occurred I should certainly not have come and taken up your valuable time
with an account of them; I hope that I know what is due to a gentleman of
your position better than that. It is on a matter of real importance that
I have come to you to ask your advice. Some one's advice I must have, and
if you feel that you cannot give it me, I must go elsewhere. I cannot but
feel that it is better for every one concerned that you should have this
piece of information rather than any one else."

He noticed how she had grown in firmness and resolve since she had begun
to speak. She now saw her way to the carrying out of her plan. There was a
definite threat in the words of her last sentence, and as she looked at
him across the shadowy light he felt as though he saw down into her mean
little soul, filled now with hatred and obstinacy and jealous
determination.

"Of course," he said severely, "I cannot refuse your confidence if you are
determined to give it me."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head. "You have always been very kind to me,
Canon Ronder, as you have been to many others in this place. Thank you."
She looked at him almost as severely as he had looked at her. "I will be
as brief as possible. I will not hide from you that I have never forgiven
Archdeacon Brandon for his cruel treatment of me. That, I think, is
natural. When your livelihood is taken away from you for no reason at all,
you are not likely to forget it--if you are human. And I do not pretend to
be more nor less than human. I will not deny that I saw these visits of
Mrs. Brandon's with considerable curiosity. There was something hurried
and secret in Mrs. Brandon's manner that seemed to me odd. I became then,
quite by chance, the friend of Mr. Morris's cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Baker,
a very nice woman. That, I think, was quite natural as we were neighbours,
so to speak, and Mrs. Baker was herself a friend of Mrs. Bassett's.

"I asked no indiscreet questions, but at last Mrs. Baker confessed to both
Mrs. Bassett and myself that she did not like what was going on in Mr.
Morris's house, and that she thought of giving notice. When we asked her
what she meant she said that Mrs. Brandon was the trouble, that she was
always coming to the house, and that she and the reverend gentleman were
shut up for hours together by themselves. She told us, too, that Mr.
Morris's sister-in-law, Miss Burnett, had also made objections. We advised
Mrs. Baker that it was her duty to stay, at any rate for the present."

Miss Milton paused. Ronder said nothing.

"Well, sir, things got so bad that Miss Burnett went away to the sea.
During her absence Mrs. Brandon came to the house quite regularly, and
Mrs. Baker told us that they scarcely seemed to mind who saw them."

As Ronder looked at her he realised how little he knew about women. He
hated to realise this, as he hated to realise any ignorance or weakness in
himself, but in the face of the woman opposite to him there was a mixture
of motives--of greed, revenge, yes, and strangely enough, of a virgin's
outraged propriety--that was utterly alien to his experience. He felt his
essential, his almost inhuman, celibacy more at that moment, perhaps, than
he had ever felt it before.

"Well, sir, this went on for some weeks. Miss Burnett returned, but, as
Mrs. Baker said, the situation remained very strained. To come to my
point, four days ago I was in one evening paying Mrs. Baker a visit. Every
one was out, although Mr. Morris was expected home for his dinner. There
was a ring at the bell and Mrs. Baker said, 'You go, my dear.' She was
busy at the moment with the cooking. I went and opened the hall-door and
there was Mrs. Brandon's parlourmaid that I knew by sight. 'I have a note
for Mr. Morris,' she said. 'You can give it to me,' I said. She seemed to
hesitate, but I told her if she didn't give it to me she might as well
take it away again, because there was no one else in the house. That
seemed to settle her, so telling me it was something special, and was to
be given to Mr. Morris as soon as possible, she left it with me and went.
She'd never seen me before, I daresay, and didn't know I didn't belong to
the house." She paused, then opening her little eyes wide and staring at
Ronder as though she were seeing him for the first time in her life she
said softly, "I have the note here."

She opened her black bag slowly, peered into it, produced a piece of paper
out of it, and shut it with a sharp little click.

"You've kept it?" asked Ronder.

"I've kept it," she repeated, nodding her head. "I know many would say I
was wrong. But was I? That's the question. In any case that is another
matter between myself and my Maker."

"Please read this, sir?" She held out the paper to him, He took it and
after a moment's hesitation read it. It had neither date nor address. It
ran as follows:

DEAREST--I am sending this by a safe hand to tell you that I cannot
possibly get down to-night. I am so sorry and most dreadfully
disappointed, but I will explain everything when we meet to-morrow.
This is to prevent your waiting on when I'm not coming.

There was no signature.

"You had no right to keep this," he said to her angrily. As he spoke he
looked at the piece of paper and felt again how strange and foreign to him
the whole nature of woman was. The risks that they would take! The foolish
mad things that they would do to satisfy some caprice or whim!

"How do you know that this was written by Mrs. Brandon?" he asked.

"Of course I know her handwriting very well," Miss Milton answered. "She
often wrote to me when I was at the Library."

He was silent. He was seeing those two in the new light of this letter. So
they were really lovers, the drab, unromantic, plain, dull, middle-aged
souls! What had they seen in one another? What had they felt, to drive
them to deeds so desperate, yes, and so absurd? Was there then a world
right outside his ken, a world from which he had been since his birth
excluded?

Absent-mindedly he had put the letter down on his table. Quickly she
stretched out her gloved hand and took it. The bag clicked over it.

"Why have you brought this to me?" he asked, looking at her with a disgust
that he did not attempt to conceal.

"You are the first person to whom I have spoken about the matter," she
answered. "I have not said anything even to Mrs. Baker. I have had the
letter for several days and have not known what is right to do about it."

"There is only one thing that is right to do about it," he answered
sharply. "Burn it."

"And say nothing to anybody about it? Oh, Canon Ronder, surely that would
not be right. I should not like people to think that you had given me such
advice. To allow the Rector of St. James' to continue in his position,
with so many looking up to him, and he committing such sins. Oh, no, sir,
I cannot feel that to be right!"

"It is not our business," he answered angrily. "It is not our affair."

"Very well, sir." She got up. "It's good of you to give me your opinion.
It is not our affair. Quite so. But it is Archdeacon Brandon's affair. He
should see this letter. I thought that perhaps you yourself might like to
speak to him----" she paused.

"I will have nothing to do with it," he answered, getting up and standing
over her. "You did very wrong to keep the letter. You are cherishing evil
passions in your heart, Miss Milton, that will bring you nothing but harm
and sorrow in the end. You have come to me for advice, you say. Well, I
give it to you. Burn that letter and forget what you know."

Her complexion had changed to a strange muddy grey as he spoke.

"There are others in this town, Canon Ronder," she said, "who are
cherishing much the same passions as myself, although they may not realise
it. I thought it wise to tell you what I know. As you will not help me, I
know now what to do. I am grateful for your advice--which, however, I do
not think you wish me to follow."

With one last look at him she moved softly to the door and was gone. She
seemed to him to leave some muddy impression of her personality upon the
walls and furniture of the room. He flung up the window, walked about
rubbing his hands against one another behind his back, hating everything
around him.

The words of the note repeated themselves again and again in his head.

"Dearest...safe hand...dreadfully disappointed.... Dearest."

Those two! He saw Morris, with his weak face, his mild eyes, his rather
shabby clothes, his hesitating manner, his thinning hair--and Mrs.
Brandon, so mediocre that no one ever noticed her, never noticed anything
about her--what she wore, what she said, what she did, anything!

Those two! Ghosts! and in love so that they would risk loss of everything
--reputation, possessions, family--that they might obtain their desire! In
love as he had never been in all his life!

His thoughts turned, with a little shudder, to Miss Milton. She had come
to him because she thought that he would like to share in her revenge.
That, more than anything, hurt him, bringing him down to her base, sordid
level, making him fellow-conspirator with her, plotting...ugh! How
cruelly unfair that he, upright, generous, should be involved like this so
meanly.

He washed his hands in the little dressing-room near the study, scrubbing
them as though the contact with Miss Milton still lingered there. Hating
his own company, he went downstairs, where he found Ellen Stiles, having
had a very happy tea with his aunt, preparing to depart.

"Going, Ellen?" he asked.

She was in the highest spirits and a hat of vivid green.

"Yes, I must go. I've been here ever so long. We've had a perfectly lovely
time, talking all about poor Mrs. Maynard and her consumption. There's
simply no hope for her, I'm afraid; it's such a shame when she has four
small children; but as I told her yesterday, it's really best to make up
one's mind to the worst, and there'll be no money for the poor little
things after she's gone. I don't know what they'll do."

"You must have cheered her up," said Ronder.

"Well, I don't know about that. Like all consumptives she will persist in
thinking that she's going to get well. Of course, if she had money enough
to go to Davos or somewhere...but she hasn't, so there's simply no hope
at all."

"If you are going along I'll walk part of the way with you," said Ronder.

"That _will_ be nice." Ellen kissed Miss Ronder very affectionately.
"Good-bye, you darling. I have had a nice time. Won't it be awful if it's
wet next week? Simply everything will be ruined. I don't see much chance
of its being fine myself. Still you never can tell."

They went out together. The Precincts was quiet and deserted; a bell,
below in the sunny town, was ringing for Evensong. "Morris's church,
perhaps," thought Ronder. The light was stretched like a screen of
coloured silk across the bright green of the Cathedral square; the great
Church itself was in shadow, misty behind the sun, and shifting from shade
to shade as though it were under water.

When they had walked a little way Ellen said: "What's the matter?"

"The matter?" Ronder echoed.

"Yes. You're looking worried, and that's so rare with you that when it
happens one's interested."

He hesitated, looking at her and almost stopping in his walk. An infernal
nuisance if Ellen Stiles were to choose this moment for the exercise of
her unfortunate curiosity! He had intended to go down High Street with her
and then to go by way of Orange Street to Foster's rooms; but one could
reach Foster more easily by the little crooked street behind the
Cathedral. He would say good-bye to her here.... Then another thought
struck him. He would go on with her.

"Isn't your curiosity terrible, Ellen!" he said, laughing. "If you didn't
happen to have a kind heart hidden somewhere about you, you'd be a
perfectly impossible woman. As it is, I'm not sure that you're not."

"I think perhaps I am," Ellen answered, laughing. "I do take a great
interest in other people's affairs. Well, why not? It prevents me from
being bored."

"But not from being a bore," said Ronder. "I hate to be unpleasant, but
there's nothing more tiresome than being asked why one's in a certain
mood. However, leave me alone and I will repay your curiosity by some of
my own. Tell me, how much are people talking about Mrs. Brandon and
Morris?"

This time she was genuinely surprised. On so many occasions he had checked
her love of gossip and scandal and now he was deliberately provoking it.
It was as though he had often lectured her about drinking too much and
then had been discovered by her, secretly tippling.

"Oh, everybody's talking, of course," she said. "Although you pretend
never to talk scandal you must know enough about the town to know that.
They happen to be talking less just at the moment because nobody's
thinking of anything but the Jubilee."

"What I want to know," said Ronder, "is how much Brandon is supposed to be
aware of--and does he mind?"

"He's aware of nothing," said Ellen decisively. "Nothing at all. He's
always looked upon his wife as a piece of furniture, neither very
ornamental nor very useful, but still his property, and therefore to be
reckoned on as stable and submissive. I don't think that in any case he
would ever dream that she could disobey him in anything, but, as it
happens, his son's flight to London and his own quarrel with you entirely
possess his mind. He talks, eats, thinks, dreams nothing else."

"What would he do, do you think," pursued Ronder, "if he were to discover
that there really _was_ something wrong, that she had been
unfaithful?"

"Why, is there proof?" asked Ellen Stiles, eagerly, pausing for a moment
in her excitement.

The sharp note of eagerness in her voice checked him.

"No--nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. Of course not. And how should I
know if there were?"

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