The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

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"You're just the person who would know," answered Ellen decisively.
"However many other people you've hoodwinked, you haven't taken _me_
in all these years. But I'll tell you this as from one friend to another,
that you've made the first mistake in your life by allowing this quarrel
with Brandon to become so public."

He marvelled again, as he had often marvelled before, at her unerring
genius for discovering just the thing to say to her friends that would
hurt them most. And yet with that she had a kind heart, as he had had
reason often enough to know. Queer things, women!

"It's not my fault if the quarrel's become public," he said. They were
turning down the High Street now and he could not show all the vexation
that he felt. "It's Brandon's own idiotic character and the love of gossip
displayed by this town."

"Well, then," she said, delighted that she had annoyed him and that he was
showing his annoyance, "that simply means that you've been defeated by
circumstances. For once they've been too strong for you. If you like that
explanation you'd better take it."

"Now, Ellen," he said, "you're trying to make me lose my temper in revenge
for my not satisfying your curiosity; give up. You've tried before and
you've always failed."

She laughed, putting her hand through his arm.

"Yes, don't let's quarrel," she said. "Isn't it delightful to-night with
the sunlight and the excitement and every one out enjoying themselves? I
love to see them happy, poor things. It's only the successful and the
self-important and the patronising that I want to pull down a little. As
soon as I find myself wanting to dig at somebody, I know it's because
they're getting above themselves. You'd better be careful. I'm not at all
sure that success isn't going to your head."

"Success?" he asked.

"Yes. Don't look so innocent. You've been here only a few months and
already you're the only man here who counts. You've beaten Brandon in the
very first round, and it's absurd of you to pretend to an old friend like
myself that you don't know that you have. But be careful."

The street was shining, wine-coloured, against the black walls that hemmed
it in, black walls scattered with sheets of glass, absurd curtains of
muslin, brown, shabby, self-ashamed backs of looking-glasses, door-knobs,
flower-pots, and collections of furniture, books and haberdashery.

"Suppose you leave me alone for a moment, Ellen," said Ronder, "and think,
of somebody else. What I really want to know is, how intimate are you with
Mrs. Brandon?"

"Intimate?"

"Yes. I mean--could you speak to her? Tell her, in some way, to be more
careful, that she's in danger. Women know how to do these things. I want
to find somebody."

He paused. _Did_ he want to find somebody? Why this strange
tenderness towards Mrs. Brandon of which he was quite suddenly conscious?
Was it his disgust of Miss Milton, so that he could not bear to think of
any one in the power of such a woman?

"Warn her?" said Ellen. "Then she _is_ in danger."

"Only if, as you say, every one is talking. I'm sorry for her."

They had come to the parting of their ways. "No. I don't know her well
enough for that. She wouldn't take it from me. She wouldn't take it from
anybody. She's prouder than you'd think. And it's my belief she doesn't
care if she is in danger. She'd rather welcome it. That's my belief."

"Good-bye then. I won't ask you to keep our talk quiet. I don't suppose
you could if you wanted to. But I will ask you to be kind."

"Why should I be kind? And you know you don't want me to be, really."

"I do want you to be."

"No, it's part of the game you're playing. Or if it isn't, you're changing
more than you've ever changed before. Look out! Perhaps it's you that's in
danger!"

As he turned up Orange Street he wondered again what impulse it was that
was making him sorry for Mrs. Brandon. He always wished people to be
happy--life was easier so--but had he, even yesterday, been told that he
would ever feel concern for Mrs. Brandon, that supreme symbol of feminine
colourless mediocrity, he would have laughed derisively.

Then the beauty of the hour drove everything else from him. The street
climbed straight into the sky, a broad flat sheet of gold, and on its
height the monument, perched against the quivering air, was a purple
shaft, its gesture proud, haughty, exultant. Suddenly he saw in front of
him, moving with quick, excited steps, Mrs. Brandon, an absurdly
insignificant figure against that splendour.

He felt as though his thoughts had evoked her out of space, and as though
she was there against her will. Then he felt that he, too, was there
against his will, and that he had nothing to do with either the time or
the place.

He caught her up. She started nervously when he said, "Good evening, Mrs.
Brandon," and raised her little mouse-face with its mild, hesitating,
grey eyes to his. He knew her only slightly and was conscious that she did
not like him. That was not his affair; she had become something quite new
to him since he had gained this knowledge of her--she was provocative,
suggestive, even romantic.

"Good evening, Canon Ronder." She did not smile nor slacken her steps.

"Isn't this a lovely evening?" he said. "If we have this weather next week
we shall be lucky indeed."

"Yes, shan't we--shan't we?" she said nervously, not considering him, but
staring straight at the street in front of her.

"I think all the preparations are made," Ronder went on in the genial easy
voice that he always adopted with children and nervous women. "There
should be a tremendous crowd if the weather's fine. People already are
pouring in from every part of the country, they tell me--sleeping
anywhere, in the fields and the hedges. This old town will be proud of
herself."

"Yes, yes," Mrs. Brandon looked about her as though she were trying to
find a way of escape. "I'm so glad you think that the weather will be
fine. I'm so glad. I think it will myself. I hope Miss Ronder is well."

"Very well, thank you." What _could_ Morris see in her, with her ill-
fitting clothes, her skirt trailing a little in the dust, her hat too big
and heavy for her head, her hair escaping in little untidy wisps from
under it? She looked hot, too, and her nose was shiny.

"You're coming to the Ball of course," he went on, relieved that now they
were near the top of the little hill. "It's to be the best Ball the
Assembly Rooms have seen since--since Jane Austen."

"Jane Austen?" asked Mrs. Brandon vaguely.

"Well, her time, you know, when dancing was all the rage. We ought to have
more dances here, I think, now that there are so many young people about."

"Yes, I agree with you. My daughter is coming out at the Ball."

"Oh, is she? I'm sure she'll have a good time. She's so pretty. Every
one's fond of her."

He waited, but apparently Mrs. Brandon had nothing more to say. There was
a pause, then Mrs. Brandon, as though she had been suddenly pushed to it
by some one behind her, held out her hand....

"Good evening, Canon Ronder."

He said good-bye and watched her for a moment as she went up past the neat
little villas, her dress trailing behind her, her hat bobbing with every
step. He looked up at the absurd figure on the top of the monument, the
gentleman in frock-coat and tall hat commemorated there. The light had
left him. He was not purple now but a dull grey. He, too, had doubtless
had his romance, blood and tears, anger and agony for somebody. How hard
to keep out of such things, and yet one must if one is to achieve
anything. Keep out of it, detached, observant, comfortable. Strange that
in life comfort should be so difficult to attain!

Climbing Green Lane he was surprised to feel how hot it was. The trees
that clustered over his head seemed to have gathered together all the heat
of the day. Everything conspired to annoy him! Bodger's Street, when he
turned into it, was, from his point of view, at its very worst, crowded
and smelly and rocking with noise. The fields behind Bodger's Street and
Canon's Yard sloped down the hill then up again out into the country
beyond.

It was here on this farther hill that the gipsies had been allowed to
pitch their caravans, and that the Fair was already preparing its
splendours. It was through these gates that the countrymen would penetrate
the town's defences, just as on the other side, low down in Seatown on the
Pol's banks, the seafaring men, fishermen and sailors and merchantmen,
were gathering. Bodger's Street was already alive with the anticipation of
the coming week's festivities. Gas-jets were flaming behind hucksters'
booths, all the population of the place was out on the street enjoying the
fine summer evening, shouting, laughing, singing, quarrelling. The effect
of the street illumined by these uncertain flares that leapt unnaturally
against the white shadow of the summer sky was of something mediaeval, and
that impression was deepened by the overhanging structure of the Cathedral
that covered the faint blue and its little pink clouds like a swinging
spider's web.

Ronder, however, was not now thinking of the town. His mind was fixed upon
his approaching interview with Foster. Foster had just paid a visit, quite
unofficial and on a private personal basis, to Wistons, to sound him about
the Pybus living and his action if he were offered it.

Ronder understood men very much better than he understood women. He
understood Foster so long as ambition and religion were his motives, but
there was something else in play that he did not understand. It was not
only that Foster did not like him--he doubted whether Foster liked anybody
except the Bishop--it was rather perhaps that Foster did not like himself.
Now it is the first rule of fanaticism that you should be so lost in the
impulse of your inspiration that you should have no power left with which
to consider yourself at all. Foster was undoubtedly a fanatic, but he did
consider himself and even despised himself. Ronder distrusted self-
contempt in a man simply because nothing made him so uncomfortable as
those moments of his own when he wondered whether he were all that he
thought himself. Those moments did not last long, but he hated them so
bitterly that he could not bear to see them at work in other people.
Foster was the kind of fanatic who might at any minute decide to put peas
in his shoes and walk to Jerusalem; did he so decide, he would abandon,
for that decision, all the purposes for which he might at the time be
working. Ronder would certainly never walk to Jerusalem.

The silence and peace of Canon's Yard when he left Bodger's Street was
almost dramatic. All that penetrated there was a subdued buzz with an
occasional shrill note as it might be on a penny whistle. The Yard was
dark, lit only by a single lamp, and the cobbles uneven. Lights here and
there set in the crooked old windows were secret and uncommunicative: the
Cathedral towers seemed immensely tall against the dusk. It would not be
dark for another hour and a half, but in those old rooms with their small
casements light was thin and uncertain.

He climbed the rickety stairs to Foster's rooms. As always, something made
him pause outside Foster's door and listen. All the sounds of the old
building seemed to come up to him; not human voices and movements, but the
life of the old house itself, the creaking protests of stairways, the
sighs of reluctant doors, the harping groans of ill-mannered window-
frames, the coughs and wheezes of trembling walls, the shudders of ill-
boding banisters.

"This house will collapse, the first gale," he thought, and suddenly the
Cathedral chimes, striking the half-hour, crashed through the wall,
knocking and echoing as though their clatter belonged to that very house.

The echo died, and the old place recommenced its murmuring.

Foster, blinking like an old owl, came to the door and, without a word,
led the way into his untidy room. He cleared a chair of papers and books
and Ronder sat down.

"Well?" said Ronder.

Foster was in a state of overpowering excitement, but he looked to Ronder
older and more worn than a week ago. There were dark pouches under his
eyes, his cheeks were drawn, and his untidy grey hair seemed thin and
ragged--here too long, there showing the skull guant and white beneath
it. His eyes burnt with a splendid flame; in them there was the light of
eternal life.

"Well?" said Ronder again, as Foster did not answer his first question.

"He's coming," Foster cried, striding about the room, his shabby slippers
giving a ghostly tip-tap behind him. "He's coming! Of course I had never
doubted it, but I hadn't expected that he would be so eager as he is. He
let himself go to me at once. Of course he knew that I wasn't official,
that I had no backing at all. He's quite prepared for things to go the
other way, although I told him that I thought there would be little chance
of that if we all worked together. He didn't ask many questions. He knows
all the conditions well. Since I saw him last he's gained in every way--
wiser, better disciplined, more sure of himself--everything that I have
never been...." Foster paused, then went on. "I think never in all my life
have I felt affection so go out to another human being. He is a man after
my own heart--a child of God, an inheritor of Eternal Life, a leader of
men----"

Ronder interrupted him.

"Yes, but as to detail. Did you discuss that? He knew of the opposition?"

Foster waved his hand contemptuously. "Brandon? What does that amount to?
Why, even in the week that I have been away his power has lessened. The
hand of God is against him. Everything is going wrong with him. I loathe
scandal, but there is actually talk going on in the town about his wife. I
could feel pity for the man were he not so dangerous."

"You are wrong there, Foster," Ronder said eagerly. "Brandon isn't
finished yet--by no manner of means. He still has most of the town behind
him and a big majority with the Cathedral people. He stands for what they
think or _don't_ think--old ideas, conservatism, every established
dogma you can put your hand on, bad music, traditionalism, superstition
and carelessness. It is not Brandon himself we are fighting, but what he
stands for."

Foster stopped and looked down at Ronder. "You'll forgive me if I speak my
mind," he said. "I'm an older man than you are, and in any case it's my
way to say what I think. You know that by this time. You've made a mistake
in allowing this quarrel with Brandon to become so personal a matter."

Ronder flushed angrily.

"Allowing!" he retorted. "As though that were not the very thing that I've
tried to prevent it from becoming. But the old fool has rushed out and
shouted his grievances to everybody. I suppose you've heard of the
ridiculous quarrel we had coming away from Carpledon. The whole town knows
of it. There never was a more ridiculous scene. He stood in the middle of
the road and screamed like a madman. It's my belief he _is_ going
mad! A precious lot I had to do with that. I was as amiable as possible.
But you can't deal with him. His conceit and his obstinacy are monstrous."

Nothing was more irritating in Foster than the way that he had of not
listening to excuses; he always brushed them aside as though they were
beneath notice.

"You shouldn't have made it a personal thing," he repeated. "People will
take sides--are already doing so. It oughtn't to be between you two at
all."

"I tell you it is not!" Ronder answered angrily. Then with a great effort
he pulled himself in. "I don't know what has been happening to me lately,"
he said with a smile. "I've always prided myself on keeping out of
quarrels, and in any case I'm not going to quarrel with you. I'm sure
you're right. It _is_ a pity that the thing's become personal. I'll
see what I can do."

But Foster paid as little attention to apologies as to excuses.

"That's been a mistake," he said; "and there have been other mistakes. You
are too personally ambitious, Ronder. We are working for the glory of God
and for no private interests whatever."

Ronder smiled. "You're hard on me," he said; "but you shall think what you
like. I won't allow that I've been personally ambitious, but it's
difficult sometimes when you're putting all your energies into a certain
direction not to seem to be serving your own ends. I like power--who
doesn't? But I would gladly sacrifice any personal success if that were
needed to win the main battle."

"Win!" Foster cried. "Win! But we've got to win! There's never been such a
chance for us! If Brandon wins now our opportunity is gone for another
generation. What Wistons can do here if he comes! The power that he will
be!"

Suddenly there came into Ronder's mind for the first time the thought that
was to recur to him very often in the future. Was it wise of him to work
for the coming of a man who might threaten his own power? He shook that
from him. He would deal with that when the time came. For the present
Brandon was enough....

"Now as to detail..." Ronder said.

They sat down at the paper-littered table. For another hour and a half
they stayed there, and it would have been curious for an observer to see
how, in this business, Ronder obtained an absolute mastery. Foster, the
fire dead in his eyes, the light gone, followed him blindly, agreeing to
everything, wondering at the clearness, order and discipline of his plans.
An hour ago, treading the soil of his own country, he had feared no man,
and his feeling for Ronder had been one half-contempt, half-suspicion. Now
he was in the other's hands. This was a world into which he had never won
right of entry.

The Cathedral chimes struck nine. Ronder got up and put his papers away
with a little sigh of satisfaction. He knew that his work had been good.

"There's nothing that we've forgotten. Bentinck-Major will be caught
before he knows where he is. Ryle too. Let us get through this next week
safely and the battle's won."

Foster blinked.

"Yes, yes," he said hurriedly. "Yes, yes. Good-night, good-night," and
almost pushed Ronder from the room.

"I don't believe he's taken in a word of it," Ronder thought, as he went
down the creaking stairs.

At the top of Badger's Street he paused. The street was still; the sky was
pale green on the horizon, purple overhead. The light was still strong,
but, to the left beyond the sloping fields, the woods were banked black
and sombre. From the meadow in front of the woods came the sounds of an
encampment--women shouting, horses neighing, dogs barking. A few lights
gleamed like red eyes. The dusky forms of caravans with their thick-set
chimneys, ebony-coloured against the green sky, crouched like animals
barking. A woman was singing, men's voices took her up, and the song came
rippling across the little valley.

All the stir of an invading world was there.

Chapter II

Friday, June 18: Shadow Meets Shadow

On that Friday evening, about half-past six o'clock, Archdeacon Brandon,
just as he reached the top of the High Street, saw God.

There was nothing either strange or unusual about this. Having had all his
life the conviction that he and God were on the most intimate of terms,
that God knew and understood himself and his wants better than any other
friend that he had, that just as God had definitely deputed him to work
out certain plans on this earth, so, at times, He needed his own help and
advice, having never wavered for an instant in the very simplest tenets of
his creed, and believing in every word of the New Testament as though the
events there recorded had only a week ago happened in his own town under
his own eyes--all this being so, it was not strange that he should
sometimes come into close and actual contact with his Master.

It may be said that it was this very sense of contact, continued through
long years of labour and success, that was the original foundation of the
Archdeacon's pride. If of late years that pride had grown from the seeds
of the Archdeacon's own self-confidence and appreciation, who can blame
him?

We translate more easily than we know our gratitude to God into our
admiration of ourselves.

Over and over again in the past, when he had been labouring with especial
fervour, he was aware that, in the simplest sense of the word, God was
"walking with him." He was conscious of a new light and heat, of a fresh
companionship; he could almost translate into physical form that
comradeship of which he was so tenderly aware. How could it be but that
after such an hour he should look down from those glorious heights upon
his other less favoured fellow-companions? No merit of his own that he had
been chosen, but the choice had been made.

On this evening he was in sad need of comfort. Never in all his past years
had life gone so hardly with him as it was going now. It was as though,
about three or four months back, he had, without knowing it, stepped into
some new and terrible country. One feature after another had changed, old
familiar faces wore new unfamiliar disguises, every step that he took now
seemed to be dangerous, misfortune after misfortune had come to him, at
first slight and even ludicrous, at last with Falk's escape, serious and
bewildering. Bewildering! That was the true word to describe his case! He
was like a man moving through familiar country and overtaken suddenly by a
dense fog. Through it all, examine it as minutely as he might, he could
not see that he had committed the slightest fault.

He had been as he had always been, and yet the very face of the town was
changed to him, his son had left him, even his wife, to whom he had been
married for twenty years, was altered. Was it not natural, therefore, that
he should attribute all of this to the only new element that had been
introduced into his life during these last months, to the one human being
alive who was his declared enemy, to the one man who had openly, in the
public road, before witnesses, insulted him, to the man who, from the
first moment of his coming to Polchester, had laughed at him and mocked
and derided him?

To Ronder! To Ronder! The name was never out of his brain now, lying
there, stirring, twisting in his very sleep, sneering, laughing even in
the heart of his private prayers.

He was truly in need of God that evening, and there, at the top of the
High Street, he saw Him framed in all the colour and glow and sparkling
sunlight of the summer evening, filling him with warmth and new courage,
surrounding him, enveloping him in love and tenderness.

Cynics might say that it was because the Archdeacon, no longer so young as
he had been, was blown by his climb of the High Street and stood,
breathing hard for a moment before he passed into the Precincts, lights
dancing before his eyes as they will when one is out of breath, the ground
swaying a little under the pressure of the heart, the noise of the town
rocking in the ears.

That is for the cynics to say. Brandon knew; his experiences had been in
the past too frequent for him, even now, to make a mistake.

Running down the hill went the High Street, decorated now with flags and
banners in honour of the great event; cutting the sky, stretching from
Brent's the haberdasher's across to Adams' the hairdresser's, was a vast
banner of bright yellow silk stamped in red letters with "Sixty Years Our
Queen. God Bless Her!"

Just beside the Archdeacon, above the door of the bookshop where he had
once so ignominiously taken refuge, was a flag of red, white and blue, and
opposite the bookseller's, at Gummridge's the stationer's, was a little
festoon of flags and a blue message stamped on a white ground: "God Bless
Our Queen: Long May She Reign!"

All down the street flags and streamers were fluttering in the little
summer breeze that stole about the houses and windows and doors as though
anxiously enquiring whether people were not finding the evening just a
little too warm.

People were not finding it at all too warm. Every one was out and
strolling up and down, laughing and whistling and chattering, dressed,
although it was only Friday, in nearly their Sunday best. The shops were
closing, one by one, and the throng was growing thicker and thicker. So
little traffic was passing that young men and women were already marching
four abreast, arm-in-arm, along the middle of the street. It was a long
time--ten years, in fact--since Polchester had seen such gaiety.

This was behind the Archdeacon; in front of him was the dark archway in
which the grass of the Cathedral square was framed like the mirrored
reflection of evening light where the pale blue and pearl white are
shadowed with slanting green. The peace was profound--nothing stirred.
There in the archway God stood, smiling upon His faithful servant, only as
Brandon approached Him passing into shadow and sunlight and the intense
blue of the overhanging sky.

Brandon tried then, as he had often tried before, to keep that contact
close to himself, but the ecstatic moment had passed; it had lasted, it
seemed, on this occasion a shorter time than ever before. He bowed his
head, stood for a moment under the arch offering a prayer as simple and
innocent as a child offers at its mother's knee, then with an
instantaneous change that in a more complex nature could have meant only
hypocrisy, but that with him was perfectly sincere, he was in a moment the
hot, angry, mundane priest again, doing battle with his enemies and
defying them to destroy him.

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