by Hugh Walpole
Millie, who was to watch the procession with Henry, was having breakfast with Victoria in her bedroom. Last night Victoria had given a dinner-party to celebrate her engagement, and she had insisted that Millie should sleep there— “the party would be late, a little dancing afterwards, and no one is so important for the success of the whole affair as you are, my Millie.”
Victoria, sitting up in her four-poster in a lace cap and purple kimono, was very fine indeed. She felt fine; she held an imaginary reception, feeling, she told Millie, exactly like Teresia Tallien, whose life she had just been reading, so she said to Millie.
“Not at all the person to feel like,” said Millie, “just before you’re married.”
“If you’re virtuous,” said Victoria, “and are never likely to be anything else to the end of your days it is rather a luxury to imagine yourself grand, beautiful and wicked.”
“You have got on rather badly with Tallien,” said Millie, “and you wouldn’t have liked Barras any better.”
“Well, I needn’t worry about it,” said Victoria, “because I’ve got Mereward, who is quite another sort of man.” She drank her tea, and then reflectively added: “Do you realize, Millie, darling, that you’ve stuck to me a whole eight months, and that we’re more ‘stuck’ so to speak than we were at the beginning?”
“Is that very marvellous?” asked Millie.
“Marvellous! Why, of course it is! You don’t realize how many I had before you came. The longest any one stayed was a fortnight.”
“I’ve very nearly departed on one or two occasions,” said Millie.
“Yes, I know you have.” Victoria settled herself luxuriously. “Just give me that paper, darling, before you go and some of the letters. Pick out the nicest ones. You’ve seen me dear, at a most turbulent point of my existence, but I’m safe in harbour now, and even if it seems a little dull I daresay I shall be able to scrape up a quarrel or two with Mereward before long.” Millie gave her the papers; she caught her hand. “You’ve been happier these last few weeks, dear, haven’t you? I’d hate to think that you’re still worrying. . . . That — that man. . . .” She paused.
“Oh, you needn’t be afraid to speak of him.” Millie sat down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know whether I’m happier exactly, but I’m quiet again — and that seems to be almost all I care about now. It’s curious though how life arranges things for you. I don’t think that I should ever have come out of that miserable loneliness if I hadn’t met some one — a woman — whose case was far worse than mine. There’s always some one deeper down, I expect, however deep one gets. She took me out of myself. I seem somehow suddenly to have grown up. Do you know, Victoria, when I look back to that first day that I came here I see myself as such a child that I wonder I went out alone.”
Victoria nodded her head.
“Yes, you are older. You’ve grown into a woman in these months; we’ve all noticed it.”
Millie got up. She stretched out her arms, laughing. “Oh! life’s wonderful! How any one can be bored I can’t think. The things that go on and the people and these wonderful times! Bunny hasn’t killed any of that for me. He’s increased it, I think. I see now what things other people have to stand. That woman, Victoria, that I spoke of just now, her life! Why, I’m only at the beginning — at the beginning of myself, at the beginning of the world, at the beginning of everything! What a time to be alive in!”
Victoria sighed. “When you talk like that, dear, and look like that it makes me wish I wasn’t going to marry Mereward. It’s like closing a door. But the enchantment is over for me. Money can’t bring it back nor love — not when the youth’s gone. Hold on to it, Millie — your youth, my dear. Some people keep it for ever. I think you will.”
Millie came and flung her arms round Victoria.
“You’ve been a dear to me, you have. Don’t think I didn’t notice how good and quiet you were when all that trouble with Bunny was going on. . . . I love you and wish you the happiest married life any woman could ever have.”
A tear trickled down Victoria’s fat cheek. “Stay with me, Millie, until you’re married. Don’t leave us. We shall need your youth and loveliness to lighten us all up. Promise.”
And Millie promised.
In the hall she met Ellen.
“Ellen, come with my brother and me to see the procession.”
Ellen regarded her darkly.
“No, thank you,” she said.
Then as she was turning away, “Have you forgiven me?”
“Forgiven you?”
“Yes, for what I did. Finding out about Mr. Baxter.”
“There was nothing to forgive,” said Millie. “You did what you thought was right.”
“Right!” answered Ellen. “Always people like you are thinking of what is right. I did what I wanted to because I wanted to.” She came close to Millie. “I’m glad though I saved you. You’ve been kind to me after your own lights. It isn’t your fault that you don’t understand me. I only want you to promise me one thing. If you’re ever grateful to me for what I did be kind to the next misshapen creature you come across. Be tolerant. There’s more in the world than your healthy mind will ever realize.” She went slowly up the stairs and out of the girl’s sight.
Millie soon forgot her; meeting Henry at Panton Street, pointing out to him that he must wear to-day a black tie, discussing the best place for the procession, all these things were more important than Ellen.
Just before they left the room she looked at him. “Henry,” she said, “what’s happened to you?”
“Happened?” he asked.
“Yes. You’re looking as though you’d just received a thousand pounds from a noble publisher for your first book — both solemn and sanctified.”
“I’ll tell you all about it one day,” he said. He told her something then, of the rescue, the staying of Christina in his room, the arrival of the uncle.
He spoke of it all lightly. “He was a nice fellow,” he said, “like a pirate. He said the mother wouldn’t trouble us again and she hasn’t. He carried Christina off to his hotel. He asked me to dinner then, but I didn’t go . . . yes, and they left for Denmark two days later. . . . No, I didn’t see them off. I didn’t see them again.”
Millie looked in her brother’s eyes and asked no more questions. But Henry had grown in stature; he was hobbledehoy no longer. More than ever they needed one another now, and more than ever they were independent of all the world.
They found a place in the crowd just inside the Admiralty Arch. It was a lovely autumn day, the sunlight soft and mellow, the grey patterns of the Arch rising gently into the blue, the people stretched like long black shadows beneath the walls.
When the procession came there was reverence and true pathos. For a moment the complexities, turmoils, selfishnesses, struggles that the War had brought in its train were drawn into one simple issue, one straightforward emotion. Men might say that that emotion was sentimental, but nothing so sincerely felt by so many millions of simple people could be called by that name. The coffin passed with the admirals and the generals; there was a pause and then the crowd broke into the released space, voices were raised, there was laughter and shouting, every one pushing here and there, multitudes trying to escape from the uneasy emotion that had for a moment caught them, multitudes too remembering some one lost for a moment but loved for ever, typified by that coffin, that tin hat, that little wailing tune.
Millie’s hand was through Henry’s arm. “Wait a moment,” she said. “There’ll be the pause at eleven o’clock. Let’s stay here and listen for it.”
They stood on the curb while the crowd, noisy, cheerful, exaggerated, swirled back and forwards around them. Suddenly eleven o’clock boomed from Big Ben. Before the strokes were completed there was utter silence; as though a sign had flashed from the sky, the waters of the world were frozen into ice. The omnibuses in Trafalgar Square stayed where they were; every man stood his hat in his hand. The women held their childre
n with a warning clasp. The pigeons around the Arch rose fluttering and crying into the air, the only sound in all the world. The two minutes seemed eternal. Tears came into Millie’s eyes, hesitated, then rolled down her cheeks. For that instant it seemed that the solution of the earth’s trouble must be so simple. All men drawn together like this by some common impulse that they all could understand, that they would all obey, that would force them to forget their individual selfishnesses, but would leave them, in their love for one another, individuals as they had never been before. “Oh! it can come! It must come!” Millie’s heart whispered. “God grant that I may live until that day.”
The moment was over; the world went on again, but there were many there who would remember.
CHAPTER X
THE BEGINNING
They were to lunch with Peter in Marylebone. Millie had some commission to execute for Victoria and told Henry that she would meet him in Peter’s room.
When she was gone he felt for a moment lost. He had been in truth dreaming ever since that last sight of Christina. He had no impulse to follow her — he knew that in that he had been wise — but he was busy enthroning her so that she would always remain with every detail of every incident connected with her until he died.
In this perhaps he was sentimental; nevertheless clearer-sighted than you would suppose. He knew that he had all his life before him, that many would come into it and would go out again, that there would be passions and desires satisfied and unsatisfied. But he also knew that nothing again would have in it quite the unselfish devotion that his passion for Christina had had. The first love is not the only love, but it is often the only love into which self does not enter.
His feet led him to Peter Street. The barrows were there with their apples and oranges and old clothes and boots and shoes and gimcrack china. The old woman with the teary eye was there, the policeman good-humouredly watching. It was all as it had been on that first afternoon now so long, long, long ago!
Henry looked at the yard, at the little blistered door, at the balcony. No sign of life in any of them.
The Peter Street romance had just begun, but it had passed away from Peter Street.
He walked to Marylebone in a dream, and when he was there he had to pull himself together to listen with sympathy to Peter’s excitement about this new monthly paper of which Peter was to be editor, the paper that was to transform the world.
He left Peter and Millie talking at the table, went to the window and looked out. As he saw the people passing up and down below them of a sudden he loved them all.
The events of the last month came crowding to him — everything that had happened: the first sight of Christina in the Circus, the first visit to Duncombe, the Hill Street library and his love for it, his interviews with Mrs. Tenssen, the day when he had given Christina luncheon in the little Spanish restaurant, Duncombe and the garden and Lady Bell-Hall, his struggles with his novel, his recovery of the old Edinburgh life, Sir Walter and his smile, the row with Tom Duncombe, the meals and the theatres and the talks with Peter. Millie’s trouble and Peter’s wife, his fight with Baxter, Duncombe’s last talk with him and his death, the last time with Christina, to-day’s Unknown Warrior — yes, and smaller things than these: sunsets and sunrises, people passing in the street, the wind in the Duncombe orchard, books new and old, his little room in Panton Street, the vista of Piccadilly Circus on a sunlit afternoon, all London and beyond it, England whom he loved so passionately, and beyond her the world to its furthest and darkest fastnesses. What a time to be alive, what a time to be young in, the enchantment, the miraculous enchantment of life!
“I am he attesting sympathy (shall I make my list of things in the house and ship the house that supports them?).
“I am not the poet of goodness only, I do not decline to be the poet of wickedness also.
“My gait is no fault-finder’s or rejector’s gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
“This minute that comes to me over the past decillions.
“There is no better than it and now. What behaved well in the past or behaves well to-day is not such a wonder.
“The wonder is always and always how there can be a mean man or an infidel.”
He turned round to speak to Peter, then saw that he had his hand on Millie’s shoulder, she seated at the table, looking up and smiling at him.
Millie and Peter? Why not? Only that would be needed to complete his happiness, his wonderful, miraculous happiness.
THE CATHEDRAL
CONTENTS
Book I. Prelude
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Book II. The Whispering Gallery
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Book III. Jubilee
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Book IV. The Last Stand
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Book I. Prelude
“Thou shalt have none other gods but Me.”
Chapter I
Brandons
Adam Brandon was born at Little Empton in Kent in 1839. He was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury, and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Ordained in 1863, he was first curate at St. Martin’s, Portsmouth, then Chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester; in the year 1875 he accepted the living of Pomfret in Wiltshire and was there for twelve years. It was in 1887 that he came to our town; he was first Canon and afterwards Archdeacon. Ten years later he had, by personal influence and strength of character, acquired so striking a position amongst us that he was often alluded to as “the King of Polchester.” His power was the greater because both our Bishop (Bishop Purcell) and our Dean (Dean Sampson) during that period were men of retiring habits of life. A better man, a greater saint than Bishop Purcell has never lived, but in 1896 he was eighty-six years of age and preferred study and the sanctity of his wonderful library at Carpledon to the publicity and turmoil of a public career; Dean Sampson, gentle and amiable as he was, was not intended by nature for a moulder of men. He was, however, one of the best botanists in the County and his little book on “Glebshire Ferns” is, I believe, an authority in its own line.
Archdeacon Brandon was, of course, greatly helped by his magnificent physical presence. “Magnificent” is not, I think, too strong a word. Six feet two or three in height, he had the figure of an athlete, light blue eyes, and his hair was still, when he was fifty-eight years of age, thick and fair and curly like that of a boy. He looked, indeed, marvellously young, and his energy and grace of movement might indeed have belonged to a youth still in his teens. It is not difficult to imagine how startling an effect his first appearance in Polchester created. Many of the Polchester ladies thought that he was like “a Greek God” (the fact that they had never seen one gave them the greater confidence), and Miss Dobell, who was the best read of all the ladies in our town, called him “the Viking.” This stuck to him, being an easy and emphatic word and pleasantly cultured.
Indeed, had Brandon come to Polchester as a single man there might have been many broken hearts; however, in 1875 he had married Amy Broughton, then a young girl of twenty. He had by her two children, a boy, Falcon, now twenty-one years of age, and a girl, Joan, just eighteen. Brandon therefore was safe from the feminine Polchester world; our town is famous among Cathedral cities for the morality of its upper classes.
It would not have been possible during all these years for Brandon to have remained unconsciou
s of the remarkable splendour of his good looks. He was very well aware of it, but any one who called him conceited (and every one has his enemies) did him a grave injustice. He was not conceited at all — he simply regarded himself as a completely exceptional person. He was not elated that he was exceptional, he did not flatter himself because it was so; God had seen fit (in a moment of boredom, perhaps, at the number of insignificant and misshaped human beings He was forced to create) to fling into the world, for once, a truly Fine Specimen, Fine in Body, Fine in Soul, Fine in Intellect. Brandon had none of the sublime egoism of Sir Willoughby Patterne — he thought of others and was kindly and often unselfish — but he did, like Sir Willoughby, believe himself to be of quite another clay from the rest of mankind. He was intended to rule, God had put him into the world for that purpose, and rule he would — to the glory of God and a little, if it must be so, to the glory of himself. He was a very simple person, as indeed were most of the men and women in the Polchester of 1897. He did not analyse motives, whether his own or any one else’s; he was aware that he had “weaknesses” (his ungovernable temper was a source of real distress to him at times — at other times he felt that it had its uses). On the whole, however, he was satisfied with himself, his appearance, his abilities, his wife, his family, and, above all, his position in Polchester. This last was very splendid.
His position in the Cathedral, in the Precincts, in the Chapter, in the Town, was unshakable.
He trusted in God, of course, but, like a wise man, he trusted also in himself.
It happened that on a certain wild and stormy afternoon in October 1896 Brandon was filled with a great exultation. As he stood, for a moment, at the door of his house in the Precincts before crossing the Green to the Cathedral, he looked up at the sky obscured with flying wrack of cloud, felt the rain drive across his face, heard the elms in the neighbouring garden creaking and groaning, saw the lights of the town far beneath the low wall that bounded the Precincts sway and blink in the storm, his heart beat with such pride and happiness that it threatened to burst the body that contained it. There had not been, perhaps, that day anything especially magnificent to elate him; he had won, at the Chapter Meeting that morning, a cheap and easy victory over Canon Foster, the only Canon in Polchester who still showed, at times, a wretched pugnacious resistance to his opinion; he had met Mrs. Combermere afterwards in the High Street and, on the strength of his Chapter victory, had dealt with her haughtily; he had received an especially kind note from Lady St. Leath asking him to dinner early next month; but all these events were of too usual a nature to excite his triumph.