by Hugh Walpole
They were pressing up the High Street now. There was no one about. It was a town of ghosts. By the Arden Gate Falk realised where he was and halted.
“Hullo! we’re nearly home.... Well...good afternoon, Mr. Davray.”
“Come into the Cathedral for a moment,” Davray seemed to be urgent about this. “Have you ever been up into the King Harry Tower? I bet you haven’t.”
“King Harry Tower?...” Falk stared at the man. What did the fellow want him to do? Go into the Cathedral? Well, why not? Stupid to go home just now — nothing to do there but think, and people would interrupt.... Think better out of doors. But what was there to think about? He was not thinking, simply going round and round.... Who was this fellow anyway?
“As you like,” he said.
They crossed the Precincts and went through the West door into the Cathedral. The nave was full of dusky light and very still. Candles glimmered behind the great choir-screen and there were lamps by the West door. Seen thus, in its half-dark, the nave bore full witness to the fact that Polchester has the largest Cathedral in Northern Europe. It is certainly true that no other building in England gives the same overwhelming sense of length.
In full daylight the nave perhaps, as is the case with all English Cathedrals, lacks colour and seems cold and deserted. In the dark of this spring evening it was full of mystery, and the great columns of the nave’s ten bays, rising unbroken to the roof groining, sprang, it seemed, out of air, superbly, intolerably inhuman.
The colours from the tombs and the brasses glimmered against the grey, and the great rose-coloured circle of the West window flung pale lights across the cold dark of the flags and pillars.
The two men were held by the mysterious majesty of the place. Falk was lifted right out of his own preoccupied thoughts.
He had never considered the Cathedral except as a place to which he was dragged for services against his will, but to-night, perhaps because of his own crisis, he seemed to see it all for the first time. He was conscious now of Davray and was aware that he did not like him and wished to be rid of him— “an awful-looking tout” he thought him, “with his greasy long hair and his white long face and his spindle legs.”
“Now we’ll go up into King Harry,” Davray said. But at that moment old Lawrence came bustling along. Lawrence, over seventy years of age, had grown stout and white-haired in the Cathedral’s service. He was a fine figure in his purple gown, broad-shouldered, his chest and stomach of a grand protuberance, his broad white flowing beard a true emblem of his ancient dignity. He was the most autocratic of Vergers and had been allowed now for many years to do as he pleased. The only thorn in his flesh was Cobbett, the junior Verger, who, as he very well realised, was longing for him to die, that he might step into his shoes. “I do believe,” he was accustomed to say to Mrs. Lawrence, a little be-bullied woman, “that that man will poison me one of these fine days.”
His autocracy had grown on him with the size and the whiteness of his beard, and there were many complaints — rude to strangers, sycophantic to the aristocracy, greedy of tips, insolent and conceited, he was an excellent example of the proper spirit of the Church Militant. He had, however, his merits. He loved small children and would have allowed them to run riot on the Cathedral greens had he not been checked, and he had a pride in the Cathedral that would drive him to any sacrifice in his defence of it.
It was natural enough that he should hate the very sight of Davray, and when that gentleman appeared he hung about in the background hoping that he might catch him in some crime. At first he thought him alone.
“Oh, Verger,” Davray said, as though he were speaking to a beggar who had asked of him alms. “I want to go up into King Harry. You have the key, I think.”
“Well, you can’t, sir,” said Lawrence, with considerable satisfaction. “’Tis after hours.” Then he saw Falk.
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Brandon, sir. I didn’t realise. Do you want to go up the Tower, sir?” “We may as well,” said Falk.
“Of course for you, sir, it’s different. Strangers have to keep certain hours. This way, sir.”
They followed the pompous old man across the nave, up the side aisle, past “tombs and monuments and gilded knights,” until they came to the King Harry Chapel. This was to the right of the choir, and before the screen that railed it off from the rest of the church there was a notice saying that this Chapel had been put aside for private prayer and it was hoped that no one would talk or make any noise, were some one meditating or praying there. The little place was infinitely quiet, with a special air of peace and beauty as though all the prayers and meditations that had been offered there had deeply sanctified it; Lawrence pushed open the door of the screen and they crossed the flagged floor. Suddenly into the heart of the hush there broke the Cathedral chimes, almost, as it seemed, directly above their heads, booming, echoing, dying with lingering music back into the silence. At the corner of the Chapel there was a little wooden door; Lawrence unlocked it and pushed it open. “Mind how you go, sir,” he said, speaking to Falk as though Davray did not exist. “’Tis a bit difficult with the winding stair.”
The two men went forward into the black darkness, leaving the dusky light behind them. Davray led the way and Falk followed, feeling with his arms the black walls on either side of him, knocking with his legs against the steps above him. Here there was utter darkness and no sound. He had suddenly a half-alarmed, half-humorous suspicion that Davray was suddenly going to turn round upon him and push him down the stair or stick a knife into him — the fear of the dark. “After all, what am I doing with this fellow?” he thought. “I don’t know him. I don’t like him. I don’t want to be with him.”
“That’s better,” he heard Davray say. There was a glimmer, then a shadow of grey light, finally they had stepped out into what was known as the Whispering Gallery, a narrow railed platform that ran the length of the Chapel and beyond to the opposite Tower. They did not stop there. They pushed up again by more winding stairs, black for a space, then lit by a window, then black again. At last, after what had seemed a long journey, they were in a little, spare, empty room with a wooden floor. One side of this little room was open and railed in. Looking down, the floor of the nave seemed a vast distance below. You seemed here to be flying in glory. The dim haze of the candles just touched the misty depth with golden colour. Above them the great roof seemed close and menacing. Everywhere pillars and buttresses rose out of space. The great architect of the building seemed here to have his true kingdom, so vast was the depth and the height and the grandeur. The walls and the roof and the pillars that supported it were alive with their own greatness, scornful of little men and their little loves. The hush was filled with movement and stir and a vast business....
The two men leaned on the rails and looked down. Far below, the white figured altar, the brass of the Black Bishop’s tomb, the glitter of Saint Margaret’s screen struck in little points of dull gold like stars upon a grey inverted sky.
Davray turned suddenly upon his companion. “And it’s men like your father,” he said, “who think that this place is theirs.... Theirs! Presumption! But they’ll get it in the neck for that. This place can bide its time. Just when you think you’re its master it turns and stamps you out.”
Falk said nothing. Davray seemed irritated by his silence. “You wait and see,” he said. “It amuses me to see your governor walking up the choir on Sundays as though he owned the place. Owned it! Why, he doesn’t realise a stone of it! Well, he’ll get it. They all have who’ve tried his game. Owned it!”
“Look here,” said Falk, “don’t you say anything about my father — that’s none of your business. He’s all right. I don’t know what the devil I came up here for — thinking of other things.”
Davray too was thinking of other things.
“You wonderful place!” he whispered. “You beautiful place! You’ve ruined me, but I don’t care. You can do what you like with me. You wonder! You wonder!”
Falk looked at him. The man was mad. He was holding on to the railing, leaning forward, staring....
“Look here, it isn’t safe to lean like that. You’ll be tumbling over and breaking your neck if you’re not careful.”
But Davray did not hear him. He was lost in his own dreams. Falk despised dreams although just now he was himself in the grip of one. Besides the fellow was drunk.
A sudden disgust of his companion overtook him.
“Well, so long,” he said. “I must be getting home!”
He wondered for a moment whether it were safe to leave the fellow there. “It’s his own look-out,” he thought, and as Davray said no more he left him.
Back once more in the King Harry Chapel, he looked up. But he could see no one and could hear no sound.
Chapter VII
Ronder’s Day
Ronder had now spent several months in Polchester and was able to come to an opinion about it, and the opinion that he had come to was that he could be very comfortable there. His aunt, who, in spite of her sharpness, never was sure how he would take anything, was a little surprised when he told her this. But then she was never certain what were the secret springs from which he derived that sense of comfort that was the centre of his life. She should have known by now that he derived it from two things — luxury and the possibility of intrigue.
Polchester could not have appeared to any casual observer a luxurious town, but it had for Ronder exactly that combination of beauty and mystery that obtained for him his sensation.
He did not analyse it as yet further than that — he knew that those two things were there; he might investigate them at his leisure.
In that easy, smiling fashion that he had developed from his earliest days as the surest protection for his own security and ease, he arranged everything around him to assure his tranquillity. Everything was not as yet arranged; it might take him six months, a year, two years for that arrangement...but he knew now that it would be done.
The second element in his comfort, his love of intrigue, would be satisfied here simply because everything was not, as yet, as he would have it. He would have hated to have tumbled into the place and found it just as he required it.
He liked to have things to move, to adjust, to arrange, just as when he entered a room he always, if he had the power, at once altered the chairs, the cushions. It was towards this final adjustment that his power of intrigue always worked. Once everything was adjusted he sank back luxuriously and surveyed it — and then, in all probability, was quickly tired of it and looked for new fields to conquer.
He could not remember a time when he had not been impelled to alter things for his comfort. He did not wish to be selfish about this, he was quite willing for every one else to do the same — indeed, he watched them with geniality and wondered why on earth they didn’t. As a small boy at Harrow he had, with an imperturbable smile and a sense of humour that, in spite of his rotund youth and a general sense amongst his elders that he was “cheeky,” won him popularity, worked always for his own comfort.
He secured it and, first as fag and afterwards as House-prefect, finally as School-prefect, did exactly what he wanted with everybody.
He did it by being, quite frankly, all things to all men, although never with sycophancy nor apparent falseness. He amused the bored, was confidential with the wicked, upright with the upright, and sympathetic with the unfortunate.
He was quite genuine in all these things. He was deeply interested in humanity, not for humanity’s sake but his own. He bore no man any grudge, but if any one was in his way he worked hard until they were elsewhere. That removal attained, he wished them all the luck in the world.
He was ordained because he thought he could deal more easily with men as a parson. “Men always take clergymen for fools,” he told his aunt, “and so they sometimes are...but not always.” He knew he was not a fool, but he was not conceited. He simply thought that he had hit upon the one secret of life and could not understand why others had not done the same. Why do people worry so? was the amused speculation. “Deep emotions are simply not worth while,” he decided on his coming of age. He liked women but his sense of humour prevented him from falling in love. He really did understand the sensual habits and desires of men and women but watched them from a distance through books and pictures and other men’s stories. He was shocked by nothing — nor did he despise mankind. He thought that mankind did on the whole very well considering its difficulties. He was kind and often generous; he bore no man alive or dead any grudge. He refused absolutely to quarrel— “waste of time and temper.”
His one danger was lest that passion for intrigue should go deeper than he allowed anything to go. Playing chess with mankind was to him, he declared, simply a means to an end. Perhaps once it had been so. But, as he grew older, there was a danger that the end should be swallowed by the means.
This danger he did not perceive; it was his one blindness. Finally he believed with La Rochefoucauld that “Pity is a passion which is wholly useless to a well-constituted mind.”
At any rate he discovered that there was in Polchester a situation exactly suited to his powers. The town, or the Cathedral part of it, was dominated by one man, and that man a stupid, autocratic, retrogressive, good-natured child. He bore that child not the slightest ill-will, but it must go or, at any rate, its authority must be removed. He did, indeed, like Brandon, and through most of this affair he did not cease to like him, but he, Ronder, would never be comfortable so long as Brandon was there, he would never be free to take the steps that seemed to him good, he would be interfered with and patronised. He was greatly amused by Brandon’s patronage, but it really was not a thing that could be allowed to remain.
If he saw, as he made his plans, that the man’s heart and soul, his life, physical and spiritual, were involved — well he was sorry. It simply proved how foolish it was to allow your heart and soul to be concerned in anything.
He very quickly perceived that the first thing to be done was to establish relations with the men who composed the Chapter. He watched, he listened, he observed, then, at the end of some months, he began to move.
Many men would have considered him lazy. He never took exercise if he could avoid it, and it was Polchester’s only fault that it had so many hills. He always had breakfast in bed, read the papers there and smoked a cigarette. Every morning he had a bath as hot as he could bear it — and he could bear it very hot indeed. Much of his best thinking was done there.
When he came downstairs he reserved the first hour for his own reading, reading, that is, that had nothing to do with any kind of work, that was purely for his own pleasure. He allowed nothing whatever to interfere with this — Gautier and Flaubert, La Bruyère and Montaigne were his favourite authors, but he read a great deal of English, Italian, and Spanish, and had a marvelous memory. He enjoyed, too, erotic literature and had a fine collection of erotic books and prints shut away in a cabinet in his study. He found great fascination in theological books: he laughed at many of them, but kept an open mind — atheistic and materialistic dogmas seemed to him as absurd as orthodox ones. He read too a great deal of philosophy but, on the whole, he despised men who gave themselves up to philosophy more than any other human beings. He felt that they lost their sense of humour so quickly, and made life unpleasant for themselves.
After his hour of reading he gave himself up to the work of the day. He was the most methodical of men: the desk in his study was full of little drawers and contrivances for keeping things in order. He had a thin vase of blue glass filled with flowers, a small Chinese image of green jade, a photograph of the Blind Homer from the Naples Museum in a silver frame, and a little gold clock; all these things had to be in their exactly correct positions. Nothing worried him so much as dust or any kind of disorder. He would sometimes stop in the middle of his work and cross the room, in the soft slippers of brown kid that he always wore in his study, and put some picture straight or move some ornament f
rom one position to another. The books that stretched along one wall from floor to ceiling were arranged most carefully according to their subjects. He disliked to see some books projecting further from the shelf than others, and, with a little smile of protest, as though he were giving them a kindly scolding, he would push them into their right places.
Let it not be supposed, however, that he was idle during these hours. He could accomplish an astonishing amount of work in a short time, and he was never idle except by deliberate intention.
When luncheon time arrived he was ready to be charming to his aunt, and charming to her he was. Their relations were excellent. She understood him so well that she left his schemes alone. If she did not entirely approve of him — and she entirely approved of nobody — she loved him for his good company, his humour, and his common-sense. She liked it too that he did not mind when she chose to allow her irony to play upon him. He cared nothing for any irony.
At luncheon they felt a very agreeable intimacy. There was no need for explanations; half allusions were enough. They could enjoy their joke without emphasising it and sometimes even without expressing it. Miss Ronder knew that her nephew liked to hear all the gossip. He collected it, tied it into little packets, and put them away in the little mechanical contrivances with which his mind was filled. She told him first what she heard, then her authorities, finally her own opinions. He thoroughly enjoyed his meal.
He had, by now, very thoroughly mastered the Cathedral finances. They were not complicated and were in good order, because Hart-Smith had been a man of an orderly mind. Ronder very quickly discovered that Brandon had had his fingers considerably in the old pie. “And now there’ll be a new pie,” he said to himself, “baked by me.”...He traced a number of stupid and conservative decisions to Brandon’s agency. There was no doubt but that many things needed a new urgency and activity.