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The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

H >> Hugh Walpole >> The Cathedral




Ronder suddenly ceased to wish to give pennies to little children or a
present to Brandon. He was, very justly, irritated.

"Do forgive me if I am impertinent," said Wistons quietly, "but I have to
know this."

"But of course," said Ronder, "I consider you the best man for this
appointment. I should not have stirred a finger in your support
otherwise." (Why, something murmured to him, are people always attributing
to you unworthy motives, first your aunt, then Foster, now this man?) "You
are quite correct in saying that there is strong opposition to your
appointment here. But that is quite natural; you have only to consider
some of your published works to understand that. A battle is being fought
with the more conservative elements in the place. You have heard probably
that the Archdeacon is their principal leader, but I think I may say that
our victory is already assured. There was never any real doubt of the
issue. Archdeacon Brandon is a splendid fellow, and has done great work
for the Church here, but he is behind the times, out-of-date, and too
obstinate to change. Then certain, family misfortunes have hit him hard
lately, and his health is not, I fear, what it was. His opposition is as
good as over."

"That's a swift decline," said Wistons. "I remember only some six months
ago hearing of him as by far the strongest man in this place."

"Yes, it has been swift," said Ronder, shaking his head regretfully, "but
I think that his position here was largely based on the fact that there
was no one else here strong enough to take the lead against him.

"My coming into the diocese--some one, however feeble, you understand,
coming in from outside--made an already strong modern feeling yet
stronger."

"I will tell you one thing," said Wistons, suddenly shooting up his
shoulders and darting forward his head. "I think all this Cathedral
intrigue disgusting. No, I don't blame you. You came into the middle of
it, and were doubtless forced to take the part you did. But I'll have no
lot or hold in it. If I am to understand that I gain the Pybus appointment
only through a lot of backstairs intrigue and cabal, I'll let it be known
at once that I would not accept that living though it were offered me a
thousand times."

"No, no," cried Ronder eagerly. "I assure you that that is not so. There
has been intrigue here owing to the old politics of the party who governed
the Cathedral. But that is, I hope and pray, over and done with. It is
because so many of us want to have no more of it that we are asking you to
come here. Believe me, believe me, that is so."

"I should not have said what I did," continued Wistons quietly. "It was
arrogant and conceited. Perhaps you cannot avoid intrigue and party
feeling among the community of any Cathedral body. That is why I want you
to understand, Canon Ronder, the kind of man I am, before you propose me
for this post. I am afraid that you may afterwards regret your advocacy.
If I were invited to a Canonry, or any post immediately connected with the
Cathedral, I would not accept it for an instant. I come, if I come at all,
to fight the Cathedral--that is to fight everything in it, round and about
it, that prevents men from seeing clearly the figure of Christ.

"I believe, Canon Ronder, that before many years are out it will become
clear to the whole world that there are now two religions--the religion of
authority, and the religion of the spirit--and if in such a division I
must choose, I am for the religion of the spirit every time."

The religion of the spirit! Ronder stirred, a little restlessly, his fat
thighs. What had that to do with it? They were discussing the Pybus
appointment. The religion of the spirit! Well, who wasn't for that? As to
dogma, Ronder had never laid very great stress upon it. A matter of words
very largely. He looked out to the garden, where a tree, scooped now like
a great green fan against the blue-white sky, was shading the sun's rays.
Lovely! Lovely! Lovely like the Hermes downstairs, lovely like the piece
of red amber on his writing-table, like the Blind Homer...like a scallop
of green glass holding water that washed a little from side to side, the
sheen on its surface changing from dark shadow to faintest dusk. Lovely!
He stared, transported, his comfort flowing full-tide now into his soul.

"Exactly!" he said, suddenly turning his eyes full on Wistons. "The
Christian Church has made a golden calf of its dogmas. The Calf is
worshipped, the Cathedral enshrines it."

Wistons gave a swift curious stab of a glance. Ronder caught it; he
flushed. "You think it strange of me to say that?" he asked. "I can see
that you do. Let me be frank with you. It has been my trouble all my life
that I can see every side of a question. I am with the modernists, but at
the same time I can understand how dangerous it must seem to the
dogmatists to abandon even an inch of the country that Paul conquered for
them. I'm afraid, Wistons, that I see life in terms of men and women
rather than of creeds. I want men to be happy and at peace with one
another. And if to form a new creed or to abandon an old one leads to
men's deeper religious happiness, well, then...." He waved his hands.

Wistons, speaking again as it were to himself, answered, "I care only for
Jesus Christ. He is overshadowed now by all the great buildings that men
have raised for Him. He is lost to our view; we must recover Him. Him!
Him! Only Him! To serve Him, to be near Him, almost to feel the touch of
His hand on one's head, that is the whole of life to me. And now He is
hard to come to, harder every year...." He got up. "I didn't come to say
more than that.

"It's the Cathedral, Render, that I fear. Don't you yourself sometimes
feel that it has, by now, a spirit of its own, a life, a force that all
the past years and all the worship that it has had have given it? Don't
you even feel that? That it has become a god demanding his own rites and
worshippers? That it uses men for its own purposes, and not for Christ's?
That almost it hates Christ? It is so beautiful, so lovely, so haughty, so
jealous!

"For I, thy God, am a jealous God.'..." He broke off. "I could love Christ
better in that garden than in the Cathedral. Tear it down and build it up
again!" He turned restlessly, almost savagely, to Ronder. "Can you be
happy and comfortable and at ease, when you see what Christ might be to
human beings and what He is? Who thinks of Him, who cares for Him, who
loves His sweetness and charity and tenderness? Why is something always in
the way, always, always, always? Love! Charity! Doesn't such a place as
this Cathedral breed hatred and malice and pride and jealousy? And isn't
its very beauty a contempt?...And now what right have you to help my
appointment to Pybus?"

Ronder smiled.

"You are what we need here," he said. "You shall shake some of our comfort
from us--make a new life here for us."

Wistons was suddenly almost timid. He spoke as though he were waking from
some dream.

"Good-bye.... Good-bye. No, don't come down. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Very kind of you. Good-bye."

But Ronder insisted on coming down. They shook hands at his door. The
figure was lost in the evening sun.

Ronder stood there for a moment gazing at the bright grass, the little
houses with their shining knockers, the purple shadow of the Cathedral.

Had he done right? Was Wistons the man? Might he not be more dangerous
than...? No, no, too late now. The fight with Brandon must move to its
appointed end. Poor Brandon! Poor dear Brandon!

He looked across at the house as on the evening of his arrival from that
same step he had looked.

Poor Brandon! He would like to do something for him, some little kindly
unexpected act!

He closed the door and softly padded upstairs, humming happily to himself
that little chant.




Chapter II

Two in the House



A letter from Falk to Joan.

Dear Joan--Mother has been here. I could get nothing out of her. I had
only one thing to say--that she must go back to father. That was the one
thing that she asserted, over and over again, that she never would. Joan,
she was tragic. I felt that I had never seen her before, never known her.
She was thinking of nothing but Morris. She seemed to see him all the time
that she was in the room with me. She is going abroad with Morris at the
end of this week--to South America, I believe. Mother doesn't seem now to
care what happens, except that she will not go back to father.

She said an odd thing to me at the end--that she had had her time, her
wonderful time, and that she could never be as unhappy or as lonely as she
was, and that she would love him always (Morris, I suppose), and that he
would love her.

The skunk that Morris is! And yet I don't know. Haven't I been a skunk
too? And yet I don't feel a skunk. If only father would be happy! Then
things would be better than they've ever been. You don't know how good
Annie is, Joan. How fine and simple and true! Why are we all such
mixtures? Why can't you ever do what's right for yourself without hurting
other people? But I'm not going to wait much longer. If things aren't
better soon I'm coming down whether he'll see me or no. We _must_
make him happy. We're all that he has now. Once this Pybus thing is
settled I'll come down. Write to me. Tell me everything. You're a brick,
Joan, to take all this as you do. Why did we go all these years without
knowing one another?--Your loving brother,

FALK.

A letter from Joan to Falk.

DEAREST FALK--I'm answering you by return because I'm so frightened. If I
send you a telegram, come down at once. Mr. Morris's sister-in-law is
telling everybody that he only went up to London on business. But she's
not going to stay here, I think. But I can't think much even of mother. I
can think of no one but father. Oh, Falk, it's been terrible these last
three days, and I don't know _what's_ going to happen.

I'll try and tell you how it's been. It's two months now since mother went
away. That night it was dreadful. He walked up and down his room all
night. Indeed he's been doing that ever since she went. And yet I don't
think it's of her that he's thinking most. I'm not sure even that he's
thinking of her at all.

He's concentrating everything now on the Pybus appointment. He talks to
himself. (You can see by that how changed he is.) He is hurrying round to
see people and asking them to the house, and he's so odd with them,
looking at them suddenly, suspiciously, as though he expected that they
were laughing at him. There's always something in the back of his mind--
not mother, I'm sure. Something happened to him that last day of the
Jubilee. He's always talking about some one who struck him, and he puts
his hand up to feel his forehead, where there was a bruise. He told me
that day that he had fallen down, but I'm sure now that he had a fight
with somebody.

He's always talking, too, about a "conspiracy" against him--not only Canon
Ronder, but something more general. Poor dear, the worst of it all is, how
bewildered he is. You know how direct he used to be, the way he went
straight to his point and wasn't afraid of anybody. Now he's always
hesitating. He hesitates before he goes out, before he goes upstairs,
before he comes into my room. It's just as though he was for ever
expecting that there's some one behind the door waiting for him with a
hammer. It's so strange how I've changed my feeling about him. I used to
think him so strong that he could beat down anybody, and now I feel he
wants looking after all the time. Perhaps he never was really strong at
all, but it was all on the outside. All the same he's very brave too. He
knows all the town's been talking about him, but I think he'd face a whole
world of Polchesters if he could only beat Canon Ronder over the Pybus
appointment. If Mr. Forsyth isn't appointed to that I think he'll go to
pieces altogether. You see, a year ago there wouldn't have been any
question about it at all. Of course he would have had his way.

But what makes me so frightened, Falk, is of something happening in the
house. Father is so suspicious that it makes me suspicious too. It doesn't
seem like the house it was at all, but as though there were some one
hiding in it, and at night it is awful. I lie awake listening, and I can
hear father walking up and down, his room's next to mine, you know. And
then if I listen hard enough, I can hear footsteps all over the house--
you know how you do in the middle of the night. And there's always some
one coming upstairs. This will sound silly to you up in London, but it
doesn't seem silly here, I assure you. All the servants feel it, and
Gladys is going at the end of the month.

And oh, Falk! I'm so sorry for him! It does seem so strange that
everything should have changed for him as it has. I feel his own
bewilderment. A year ago he seemed so strong and safe and secure as though
he would go on like that for ever, and hadn't an enemy in the world. How
could he have? He's never meant harm to any one. Your going away I can
understand, but mother, I feel as though I never could speak to her again.
To be so cruel to father and to write him such a letter! (Of course I
didn't see the letter, but the effect of it on father was terrible.)

He's so lonely now. He scarcely realises me half the time, and you see he
never did think very much about me before, so it's very difficult for him
to begin now. I'm so inexperienced. It's hard enough running the house
now, and having to get another servant instead of Gladys--and I daresay
the others will go too now, but that's nothing to waiting all the time for
something to happen and watching father every minute. We _must_ make
him happy again, Falk. You're quite right. It's the only thing that
matters. Everything else is less important than that. If only this Pybus
affair were over! Canon Ronder is so powerful now. I'm so afraid of him. I
do hate him so! The Cathedral, and the town, everything seems to have
changed since he came. A year ago they were like father, settled for ever.
And now every one's talking about new people and being out-of-date, and
changing the Cathedral music and everything! But none of that matters in
comparison with father.

I've written a terribly long letter, but it's done me ever so much good.
I'm sometimes so tempted to telegraph to you at once. I'm almost sure
father would be glad to see you. You were always the one he loved most.
But perhaps we'd better wait a little: if things get worse in any way I'll
telegraph at once.

I'm so glad you're well, and happy. You haven't in your letters told me
anything about the Jubilee in London. Was it very fine? Did you see the
Queen? Did she look very happy? Were the crowds very big? Much love from
your loving sister,

JOAN.

* * * * *

Joan, waiting in the shadowy drawing-room for Johnny St. Leath, wondered
whether her father had come in or no.

It wouldn't matter if he had, he wouldn't come into the drawing-room. He
would go directly into his study. She knew exactly what he would do. He
would shut the door, then a minute later would open it, look into the hall
and listen, then close it again very cautiously. He always now did that.
And in any case if he did come into the drawing-room and saw Johnny it
wouldn't matter. His mind was entirely centred on Pybus, and Johnny had
nothing to do with Pybus. Johnny's mother, yes. Had that stout white-
haired cockatoo suddenly appeared, she would be clutched, absorbed,
utilised to her last white feather. But she didn't appear. She stayed up
in her Castle, serene and supreme.

Joan was very nervous. She stood, a little grey shadow in the grey room,
her hands twisting and untwisting. She was nervous because she was going
to say good-bye to Johnny, perhaps for ever, and she wasn't sure that
she'd have the strength to do it.

Suddenly he was there with her in the room, big and clumsy and cheerful,
quite unaware apparently that he was never, after this, to see Joan again.

He tried to kiss her but she prevented him. "No, you must sit over there,"
she said, "and we must never, at least not probably for years and years,
kiss one another again."

He was aware, as she spoke, of quite a new, a different Joan; he had been
conscious of this new Joan on many occasions during these last weeks. When
he had first known her she had been a child and he had loved her for her
childishness; now he must meet the woman and the child together, and
instinctively he was himself more serious in his attitude to her.

"We could talk much better, Joan dear," he said, "if we were close
together."

"No," she said; "then I couldn't talk at all. We mustn't meet alone again
after to-day, and we mustn't write, and we mustn't consider ourselves
engaged."

"Why, please?"

"Can't you see that it's all impossible? We've tried it now for weeks and
it becomes more impossible every day. Your mother's absolutely against it
and always will be--and now at home--here--my mother----"

She broke off. He couldn't leave her like that; he sprang up, went across
to her, put his arms around her, and kissed her. She didn't resist him nor
move from him, but when she spoke again her voice was firmer and more
resolved than before.

"No, Johnny, I mean it, I can think of nothing now but father. So long as
he's alive I must stay with him. He's quite alone now, he has nobody. I
can't even think about you so long as he's like this, so unwell and so
unhappy. It isn't as though I were very clever or old or anything. I've
never until lately been allowed to do anything all my life, not the
tiniest bit of housekeeping, and now suddenly it has all come. And if I
were thinking of you, wanting to see you, having letters from you, I
shouldn't attend to this; I shouldn't be able to think of it----"

"Do you still love me?"

"Why, of course. I shall never change."

"And do you think that I still love you?"

"Yes."

"And do you think I'll change?"

"You may. But I don't want to think so."

"Well, then, the main question is settled. It doesn't matter how long we
wait."

"But it _does_ matter. It may be for years and years. You've got to
marry, you can't just stay unmarried because one day you may marry me."

"Can't I? You wait and see whether I can't."

"But you oughtn't to, Johnny. Think of your family. Think of your mother.
You're the only son."

"Mother can just think of me for once. It will be a bit of a change for
her. It will do her good. I've told her whom I want to marry, and she must
just get used to it. She admits herself that she can't have anything
against you personally, except that you're too young. I asked her whether
she wanted me to marry a Dowager of sixty."

Joan moved away. She walked to the window and looked out at the grey mist
sweeping like an army of ghostly messengers across the Cathedral Green.
She turned round to him.

"No, Johnny, this time it isn't a joke. I mean absolutely what I say.
We're not to meet alone or to write until--father doesn't need me any
more. I can't think, I mustn't think, of anything but father now. Nothing
that you can say, or any one can say, will make me change my mind about
that now.... And please go, Johnny, because it's so hard while you're
here. And we _must_ do it. I'll never change, but you're free to, and
you _ought_ to. It's your duty to find some one more satisfactory
than me."

But Johnny appeared not to have heard her last words. He had been looking
about him, at the walls, the windows, the ceiling--rather as a young dog
sniffs some place new to him.

"Joan, tell me. Are you all right here? You oughtn't to be all alone here
like this, just with your father. Can't you get some one to come and
stay?"

"No," she answered bravely. "Of course it's all right. I've got Gladys,
who's been with us for years."

"There's something funny," he said, still looking about him. "It feels
queer to me--sort of unhappy."

"Never mind that," she said, hurriedly moving towards the door, as though
she had heard footsteps. "You must go, Johnny. Kiss me once, the last
time. And then no letters, no anything, until--until--father's happy
again."

She rested in his arms, suddenly tranquil, safe, at peace. Her hands were
round his neck. She kissed his eyes. They clung together, suddenly two
children, utterly confident in one another and in their mutual faith.

A hand was on the door. They separated. The Archdeacon came in. He peered
into the dusky room.

"Joan! Joan! Are you there?"

She came across to him. "Yes, father, here I am. And this is Lord St.
Leath."

"How do you do, sir?" said Johnny.

"How do you do? I hope your mother is well."

"Very well, thank you, sir."

"That's good, that's good. I have some business to discuss with her.
Rather important business; I may come and see her to-morrow afternoon if
she is disengaged; Will you kindly tell her?"

"Indeed I will, sir."

"Thank you. Thank you. This room is very dark. Why are there no lights?
Joan, you should have lights. There's no one else here, is there?"

"No, father."

Johnny heard their voices echoing in the empty hall as he let himself out.

Brandon shut his study door and looked about him. The lamp on his table
was lit, his study had a warm and pleasant air with the books gleaming in
their shelves and the fire crackling. (You needed a fire on these late
summer evenings.) Nevertheless, although the room looked comfortable, he
did not at once move into it. He stood there beside the door, as though he
was waiting for something. He listened. The house was intensely quiet. He
opened the door and looked into the passage. There was no one there. The
gas hissed ever so slightly, like a whispering importunate voice. He came
back into his room, closing the door very carefully behind him, went
across softly to his writing-table, sat down, and took up his pen. His
eyes were fixed on the door, and then suddenly he would jerk round in his
chair as though he expected to catch some one who was standing just behind
him.

Then began that fight that always now must be waged whenever he sat down
at his desk, the fight to drive his thoughts, like sheep, into the only
pen that they must occupy. He must think now only of one thing; there were
others--pictures, ideas, memories, fears, horrors even--crowding, hovering
close about him, and afterwards--after Pybus--he would attend to them.
Only one thing mattered now. "Yes, you gibbering idiots, do your worst;
knock me down. Come on four to one like the cowards that you are, strike
me in the back, take my wife from me, and ruin my house. I will attend to
all of you shortly, but first--Pybus."

His lips were moving as he turned over the papers. _Was_ there some
one in the room with him? His head was aching so badly that it was
difficult to think. And his heart! How strangely that behaved in these
days! Five heavy slow beats, then a little skip and jump, then almost as
though it had stopped beating altogether.

Another thing that made it difficult to work in that room was that the
Cathedral seemed so close. It was not close really, although you could, so
often, hear the organ, but now Brandon had the strange fancy that it had
drawn closer during these last weeks, and was leaning forward with its ear
to his house, listening just as a man might! Funny how Brandon now was
always thinking of the Cathedral as a person! Stones and bricks and mortar
and bits of glass, that's what the Cathedral was, and yet lately it had
seemed to move and have a being of its own.

Fancies! Fancies! Really Brandon must attend to his business, this
business of Pybus and Forsyth, which in a week now was to be settled. He
talked to himself as he turned the papers over. He had seen the Bishop,
and Ryle (more or less persuaded), and Bentinck-Major (dark horse, never
could be sure of him), Foster, Rogers...Foster? Foster? Had he seen
Foster? Why did the mention of that name suddenly commence the unveiling
for him of a scene upon which, he must not look? The crossing the bridge,
up the hill, at the turnstile, paying your shilling...no, no, no
farther. And Bentinck-Major! That man laughed at him! Positively he dared,
when a year ago he would have bent down and wiped the dust off his shoes!
Positively!

That man! That worm! That mean, sycophantic...He was beginning to get
angry. He must not get angry. That's what Puddifoot had said, that had
been the one thing that old Puddifoot had said correctly. He must not get
angry, not even with--Ronder.

At the mention of that name something seemed to stir in the room, some one
to move closer. Brandon's heart began to race round like a pony in a
paddock. Very bad. Must keep quiet. Never get excited. Then for a moment
his thoughts did range, roaming over that now so familiar ground of
bewilderment. Why? Why? Why?

Why a year ago _that_, and now _this_? When he had done no one
in the world any harm and had served God so faithfully? Why? Why? Why?

Back, back to Pybus. This wasn't work. He had much to do and no time to
lose. That enemy of his was working, you could be sure of that. Only a
week! Only a week!

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