by Hugh Walpole
“Laughing at your Archdeacon?” Miss Stiles’ voice was softer and slower than any complaining cow’s.
“Yes. I hear you’ve all been laughing about the elephant. That was a thing that might have happened to any one.”
Puddifoot laughed. “The point is, though, that it happened to Brandon. That’s the joke. And his new top hat.”
“Well, I won’t have it. Milk, doctor? Miss Dobell and I agree that it’s a shame.”
Miss Dobell, who was in appearance like one of those neat silk umbrellas with the head of a parrot for a handle, and whose voice was like the running brook both for melody and monotony, thus suddenly appealed to, blushed, stammered, and finally admitted that the Archdeacon was, in her opinion, a hero.
“That’s not exactly the point, dear Mary,” said Miss Stiles. “The point is, surely, that an elephant straight from the desert ate our best Archdeacon’s best hat in the High Street. You must admit that that’s a laughable circumstance in this the sixtieth year of our good Queen’s reign. I, for one, intend to laugh.”
“No, you don’t, Ellen,” and, to every one’s surprise, Mrs. Combermere’s voice was serious. “I mean what I say. I’m not joking at all. Brandon may have his faults, but this town and everything decent in it hangs by him. Take him away and the place drops to pieces. I suppose you think you’re going to introduce your Ronders as up-to-date rivals. We prefer things as they are, thank you.”
Miss Stiles’ already bright colouring was a little brighter. She knew her Betsy Combermere, but she resented rebukes before Puddifoot.
“Then,” she said, “if he means all that to the place, he’d better look after his son more efficiently.”
“And exactly what do you mean by that?” asked Mrs. Combermere.
“Oh, everybody knows,” said Miss Stiles, looking round to Miss Dobell and the doctor for support, “that young Brandon is spending the whole of his time down in Seatown, and that Miss Annie Hogg is not entirely unconnected with his visits.”
“Really, Ellen,” said Mrs. Combermere, bringing her fist down upon the table, “you’re a disgusting woman. Yes, you are, and I won’t take it back, however much you ask me to. All the worst scandal in this place comes from you. If it weren’t for you we shouldn’t be so exactly like every novelist’s Cathedral town. But I warn you, I won’t have you talking about Brandon. His son’s only a boy, and the handsomest male in the place by the way — present company, of course, excepted. He’s only been home a few months, and you’re after him already with your stories. I won’t have it — —”
Miss Stiles rose, her fingers trembling as she drew on her gloves.
“Well, I won’t stay here to be insulted, anyway. You may have known me a number of years, Betsy, but that doesn’t allow you all the privileges. The only matter with me is that I say what I think. You started the business, I believe, by insulting my friends.”
“Sit down, Ellen,” said Mrs. Combermere, laughing. “Don’t be a fool. Who’s insulting your friends? You’d insult them yourself if they were only successful enough. You can have your Ronder.”
The door opened and the maid announced: “Canon Ronder.”
Every one was conscious of the dramatic fitness of this, and no one more so than Mrs. Combermere. Ronder entered the room, however, quite unaware of anything apparently, except that he was feeling very well and expected amusement from his company. He presented precisely the picture of a nice contented clergyman who might be baffled by a school treat but was thoroughly “up” to afternoon tea. He seemed a little stouter than when he had first come to Polchester, and his large spectacles were as round as two young moons.
“How do you do, Mrs. Combernere? I do hope you will forgive my aunt, but she has a bad headache. She finds Polchester a little relaxing.”
Mrs. Combermere did not get up, but stared at him from, behind her tea- table. That was a stare that has frightened many people in its time, and to-day it was especially challenging. She was annoyed with Ellen Stiles, and here, in front of her, was the cause of her annoyance.
They faced one another, and the room behind them was aware that Mrs. Combermere, at any rate, had declared battle. Of what Ronder was aware no one knew.
“How do you do, Canon Ronder? I’m delighted that you’ve honoured my poor little house. I hear that you’re a busy man. I’m all the more proud that you can spare me half an hour.”
She kept him standing there, hoping, perhaps, that he would be consciously awkward and embarrassed. He was completely at his ease.
“Oh, no, I’m not busy. I’m a very lazy man.” He looked down at her, smiling, aware, apparently, of no one else in the room. “I’m always meaning to pull myself up. But I’m too old for improvement”
“We’re all busy people here, although you mayn’t think it, Canon Ronder. But I’m afraid you’re giving a false account of yourself. I’ve heard of you.”
“Nothing but good, I hope.”
“Well, I don’t know. That depends. I expect you’re going to shake us all up and teach us improvement.”
“Dear me, no! I come to you for instruction. I haven’t an idea in the world.” “Too much modesty is a dangerous thing. Nobody’s modest in Polchester.”
“Then I shall be Polchester’s first modest man. But I’m not modest. I simply speak the truth.”
Mrs. Combermere smiled grimly. “There, too, you will be the exception. We none of us speak the truth here.”
“Really, Mrs. Combermere, you’re giving Polchester a dreadful character.” He laughed, but did not take his eyes away from her. “I hope that you’ve been here so long that you’ve forgotten what the place is like. I believe in first impressions.”
“So do I,” she said, very grimly indeed.
“Well, in a year’s time we shall see which of us is right. I’ll be quite willing to admit defeat.”
“Oh, a year’s time!” She laughed more pleasantly. “A great deal can happen in a year. You may be a bishop by then, Canon Ronder,”
“Ah, that would be more than I deserve,” he answered quite gravely.
The little duel was over. She turned around, introduced him to Miss Dobell and Puddifoot, both of whom, however, he had already met. He sat down, very happily, near the fire and listened to Miss Dobell’s shrill proclamation of her adoration of Browning. Conversation became general, and was concerned first with the Jubilee and the preparations for it, afterwards with the state of South Africa, Lord Penrhyn’s quarries, and bicycling. Every one had a good deal to say about this last topic, and the strange costumes which ladies, so the papers said, were wearing in Battersea Park when out on their morning ride.
Miss Dobell said that “it was too disgraceful,” to which Mrs. Combermere replied “Fudge! As though every one didn’t know by this time that women had legs!”
Everything, in fact, went very well, although Ellen Stiles observed to herself with a certain malicious pleasure that their hostess was not entirely at her ease, was “a little ruffled, about something.”
Soon two more visitors arrived — first Mr. Morris, then Mrs. Brandon. They came close upon one another’s heels, and it was at once evident that they would, neither of them, alter very considerably the room’s atmosphere. No one ever paid any attention to Mrs. Brandon in Polchester, and although Mr. Morris had been some time now in the town, he was so shy and retiring and quiet that no one was, as yet, very distinctly aware of him. Mrs. Combermere was occupied with her own thoughts and the others were talking very happily beside the fire, so it soon happened that Morris and Mrs. Brandon were sitting by themselves in the window.
There occurred then a revelation.... That is perhaps a portentous word, but what else can one call it? It is a platitude, of course, to say that there is probably no one alive who does not remember some occasion of a sudden communion with another human being that was so beautiful, so touching, so transcendentally above human affairs that a revelation was the only definition for it. Afterwards, when analysis plays its part, one may
talk about physical attractions, about common intellectual interests, about spiritual bonds, about what you please, but one knows that the essence of that meeting is undefined.
It may be quite enough to say about Morris and Mrs. Brandon, that they were both very lonely people. You may say, too, that there was in both of them an utterly unsatisfied longing to have some one to protect and care for. Not her husband nor Falk nor Joan needed Mrs. Brandon in the least — and the Archdeacon did not approve of dogs in the house. Or you may say, if you like, that these two liked the look of one another, and leave it at that. Still the revelation remains — and all the tragedy and unhappiness and bitterness that that revelation involved remains too....
This was, of course, not the first time that they had met. Once before at Mrs. Combermere’s they had been introduced and talked together for a moment; but on that occasion there had been no revelation.
They did not say very much now. Mrs. Brandon asked Morris whether he liked Polchester and he said yes. They talked about the Cathedral and the coming Jubilee. Morris said that he had met Falk. Mrs. Brandon, colouring a little, asked was he not handsome? She said that he was a remarkable boy, very independent, that was why he had not got on very well at Oxford.... He was a tremendous comfort to her, she said. When he went away...but she stopped suddenly.
Not looking at him, she said that sometimes one felt lonely even though there was a great deal to do, as there always was in a town like Polchester.
Yes, Morris said that he knew that. And that was really all. There were long pauses in their conversation, pauses that were like the little wooden hammerings on the stage before the curtain rises.
Mrs. Brandon said that she hoped that he would come and see her, and he said that he would. Their hands touched, and they both felt as though the room had suddenly closed in upon them and become very dim, blotting the other people out.
Then Mrs. Brandon got up to go. Afterwards, when she looked back to this, she remembered that she had looked, for some unknown reason, especially at Canon Ronder, as she stood there saying good-bye.
She decided that she did not like him. Then she went away, and Mrs. Combermere was glad that she had gone.
Of all the dull women....
Chapter VI
Seatown Mist and Cathedral Dust
Falk Brandon knew quite well that his mother was watching him.
It was a strange truth that until this return of his from Oxford he had never considered his mother at all. It was not that he had grown to disregard her, as do many sons, because of the monotonous regularity of her presence. Nor was it that he despised her because he seemed so vastly to have outgrown her. He had not been unkind nor patronising nor contemptuous — he had simply not yet thought about her. The circumstances of his recent return, however, had forced him to consider every one in the house. He had his secret preoccupation that seemed so absorbing and devastating to him that he could not believe that every one around him would not guess it. He soon discovered that his father was too cock-sure and his sister too innocent to guess anything. Now he was not himself a perceptive man; he had, after all, seen as yet very little of the world, and he had a great deal of his father’s self-confidence; nevertheless, he was just perceptive enough to perceive that his mother was thinking about him, was watching him, was waiting to see what he would do....
His secret was quite simply that, for the last year, he had been devastated by the consciousness of Annie Hogg, the daughter of the landlord of “The Dog and Pilchard.” Yes. devastated was the word. It would not be true to say that he was in love with her or, indeed, had any analysed emotion for her — he was aware of her always, was disturbed by her always, could not keep away from her, wanted something in connection with her far deeper than mere love-making —
What he wanted he did not know. He could not keep away from her, and yet when he was with her nothing occurred. She did not apparently care for him; he was not even sure that he wanted her to. At Oxford during his last term he had thought of her — incessantly, a hot pain at his heart. He had not invited the disturbance that had sent him down, but he had welcomed it.
Every day he went to “The Dog and Pilchard.” He drank but little and talked to no one. He just leaned up against the wall and looked at her. Sometimes he had a word with her. He knew that they must all be speaking of it. Maybe the whole town was chattering. He could not think of that. He had no plans, no determination, no resolve — and he was desperately unhappy....
Into this strange dark confusion the thought of his mother drove itself. He had from the very beginning been aware of his father in this connection. In his own selfish way he loved his father, and he shared in his pride and self-content. He was proud of his father for being what he was, for his good-natured contempt of other people, for his handsome body and his dominance of the town. He could understand that his father should feel as he did, and he did honestly consider him a magnificent man and far above every one else in the place. But that did not mean that he ever listened to anything that his father said. He pleased himself in what he did, and laughed at his father’s temper.
He had perceived from the first that this connection of his with Annie Hogg might do his father very much harm, and he did not want to harm him. The thought of this did not mean that for a moment he contemplated dropping the affair because of his father — no, indeed — but the thought of the old man, as he termed him, added dimly to his general unhappiness. He appreciated the way that his father had taken his return from Oxford. The old man was a sportsman. It was a great pity that he should have to make him unhappy over this business. But there it was — you couldn’t alter things.
It was this fatalistic philosophy that finally ruled everything with him. “What must be must.” If things went wrong he had his courage, and he was helped too by his contempt for the world....
He knew his father, but he was aware now that he knew nothing at all about his mother.
“What’s she thinking about?” he asked himself.
One afternoon he was about to go to Seatown when, in the passage outside his bedroom, he met his mother. They both stopped as though they had something to say to one another. He did not look at all like her son, so fair, tall and aloof, as though even in his own house he must be on his guard, prepared to challenge any one who threatened his private plans.
“She’s like a little mouse,” he thought to himself, as though he were seeing her for the first time, “preparing to run off into the wainscot” He was conscious, too, of her quiet clothes and shy preoccupied timidity — all of it he seemed to see for the first time, a disguise for some purpose as secret, perhaps, as his own.
“Oh, Falk,” she said, and stopped, and then went on with the question that she so often asked him:
“Is there anything you want?”
“No, mother, thank you. I’m just going out.”
“Oh, yes....” She still stayed there nervously looking up at him.
“I was wondering —— Are you going into the town?”
“Yes, mother. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No, thank you.” Still she did not move.
“Joan’s out,” she said. Then she went on quickly, “I wish you’d tell me if there were anything — —”
“Why, of course.” He laughed. “What exactly do you mean?”
“Nothing, dear. Only I like to know about your plans.”
“Plans? I haven’t any.”
“No, but I always think you may be going away suddenly. Perhaps I could help you. I know it isn’t very much that I can do, but anything you told me I think I could help you about.... I’d like to help you.”
He could see that she had been resolving for some time to speak to him, and that this little appeal was the result of a desperate determination. He was touched.
“That’s all right, mother. I suppose father and you think I oughtn’t to be hanging around here doing nothing.” “Oh, your father hasn’t said anything to me. I don’t know what he
thinks. But I should miss you if you went. It is nice for us having you, although, of course, it must seem slow to you here.”
He stood back against the wall, looking past her out through the window that showed the grey sky of a misty day.
“Well, it’s true that I’ve got to settle about doing something soon. I can’t be home like this for ever. There’s a man I know in London wants me to go in for a thing with him....”
“What kind of a thing, dear?”
“It’s to do with the export trade. Travelling about. I should like that. I’m a bit restless, I’m afraid. I should want to put some money into it, of course, but the governor will let me have something.... He wants me to go into Parliament.”
“Parliament?”
“Yes,” Falk laughed. “That’s his latest idea. He was talking about it the other night. Of course, that’s foolishness. It’s not my line at all. I told him so.”
“I wouldn’t like you to go away altogether,” she repeated. “It would make a great difference to me.”
“Would it really?” He had a strange mysterious impulse to speak to her about Annie Hogg. The thought of his mother and Annie Hogg together showed him at once how impossible that was. They were in separate worlds. He was suddenly angry at the difficulties that life was making for him without his own wish. “Oh, I’ll be here some time yet, mother,” he said. “Well, I must get along now. I’ve got an appointment with a fellow.”
She smiled and disappeared into her room.
All the way into Seatown he was baffled and irritated by this little conversation. It seemed that you could not disregard people by simply determining to disregard them. All the time behind you and them some force was insisting on places being taken, connections being formed. One was simply a bally pawn...a bally pawn....
But what was his mother thinking? Had some one been talking to her? Perhaps already she knew about Annie. But what could she know? Girls like Annie were outside her ken. What could his mother know about life? The day did not help his dissatisfaction. The fog had not descended upon the town, but it had sent as its forerunner a wet sea mist, dim and intangible, depressing because it removed all beauty and did not leave even challenging ugliness in its place.