by Hugh Walpole
Every one, except possibly Ronder, was aware that this was the first occasion for many years that any motion of Brandon’s had been defeated....
Without waiting for any further business the Archdeacon gathered together his papers and, looking neither to right nor left, strode from the room.
Book II. The Whispering Gallery
Chapter I
Five O’Clock — The Green Cloud
The cloud seemed to creep like smoke from the funnel of the Cathedral tower. The sun was setting in a fiery wreath of bubbling haze, shading in rosy mist the mountains of grey stone. The little cloud, at first in the shadowy air light green and shaped like a ring, twisted spirally, then, spreading, washed out and lay like a pool of water against the smoking sunset.
Green like the Black Bishop’s ring.... Lying there, afterwards, until the orange had faded and the sky, deserted by the sun, was milk-white. The mists descended. The Cathedral chimes struck five. February night, cold, smoke-misted, enwrapped the town.
At a quarter to five Evensong was over and Cobbett was putting out the candles in the choir. Two figures slowly passed down the darkening nave.
Outside the west door they paused, gazing at the splendour of the fiery sky.
“It’s cold, but there’ll be stars,” Ronder said.
Stars. Cold. Brandon shivered. Something was wrong with him. His heart had clap-clapped during the Anthem as though a cart with heavy wheels had rumbled there. He looked suspiciously at Ronder. He did not like the man, confidently standing there addressing the sky as though he owned it. He would have liked the sunset for himself.
“Well, good-night, Canon,” brusquely. He moved away.
But Ronder followed him.
“One moment, Archdeacon.... Excuse me.... I have been wanting an opportunity....”
Brandon paused. The man was nervous. Brandon liked that.
“Yes?” he said.
The rosy light was fading. Strange that little green cloud rising like smoke from the tower....
“At the last Chapter we were on opposite sides. I want to say how greatly I’ve regretted that. I feel that we don’t know one another as we should. I wonder if you would allow me...”
The light was fading — Ronder’s spectacles shone, his body in shadow.
“...to see something more of you — to have a real talk with you?”
Brandon smiled grimly to himself in the dusk. This fool! He was afraid then. He saw himself hatless in Bennett’s shop; outside, the jeering crowd.
“I’m afraid, Canon Ronder, that we shall never see eye to eye here about many things. If you will allow me to say so, you have perhaps not been here quite long enough to understand the real needs of this diocese. You must go slowly here — more slowly than perhaps you are prepared for. We are not Modernists here.”
The spectacles, alone visible, answered: “Well, let us discuss it then. Let us talk things over. Let me ask you at once, Have you something against me, something that I have done unwittingly? I have fancied lately a personal note.... I am absurdly sensitive, but if there is anything that I have done, please let me apologise for it. I want you to tell me.”
Anything that he had done? The Archdeacon smiled grimly to himself in the dusk.
“I really don’t think, Canon, that talking things over will help us. There is really nothing to discuss.... Good-night.”
The green cloud was gone. Ronder, invisible now, remained in the shadow of the great door.
II
Beside the river, above the mill, a woman’s body was black against the gold-crested water. She leaned over the little bridge, her body strong, confident in its physical strength, her hands clasped, her eyes meditative.
No need for secrecy to-night. Her father was in Drymouth for two days. Quarter to five. The chimes struck out clear across the town. Hearing them she looked back and saw the sky a flood of red behind the Cathedral. She longed for Falk to-night, a new longing. He was better than she had supposed, far, far better. A good boy, tender and warm-hearted. To be trusted. Her friend. At first he had stood to her only for a means of freedom. Freedom from this horrible place, from this horrible man, her father, more horrible than any others knew. Her mother had known. She shivered, seeing that body, heavy-breasted, dull white, as, stripped to the waist, he bent over the bed to strike. Her mother’s cry, a little moan.... She shivered again, staring into the sunset for Falk....
He was with her. They leant over the bridge together, his arm around her. They said very little.
She looked back.
“See that strange cloud? Green. Ever seen a green cloud before? Ah, it’s peaceful here.”
She turned and looked into his face. As the dusk came down she stroked his hair. He put his arm round her and held her close to him.
III
The lamps in the High Street suddenly flaring beat out the sky. There above the street itself the fiery sunset had not extended; the fair watery space was pale egg-blue; as the chimes so near at hand struck a quarter to five the pale colour began slowly to drain away, leaving ashen china shades behind it, and up to these shades the orange street-lights extended, patronising, flaunting.
But Joan, pausing for a moment under the Arden Gate before she turned home, saw the full glory of the sunset. She heard, contending with the chimes, the last roll of the organ playing the worshippers out of that mountain of sacrificial stone.
She looked up and saw a green cloud, faintly green like early spring leafage, curl from the tower smoke-wise; and there, lifting his hat, pausing at her side, was Johnny St. Leath.
She would have hurried on; she was not happy. Things were not right at home. Something wrong with father, with mother, with Falk. Something wrong, too, with herself. She had heard in the town the talk about this girl who was coming to the Castle for the Jubilee time, coming to marry Johnny. Coming to marry him because she was rich and handsome. Lovely. Lady St. Leath was determined....
So she would hurry on, murmuring “Good evening.” But he stopped her. His face was flushed. Andrew heaved eagerly, hungrily, at his side.
“Miss Brandon. Just a moment. I want to speak to you. Lovely evening, isn’t it?...You cut me the other day. Yes, you did. In Orange Street.”
“Why?”
She tried to speak coldly.
“We’re friends. You know we are. Only in this beastly town no one can be free.... I only want to tell you if I go away — suddenly — I’m coming back. Mind that. You’re not to believe anything they say — anything that any one says. I’m coming back. Remember that. We’re friends. You must trust me. Do you hear?”
And he was gone, striding off towards the Cathedral, Andrew panting at his heels.
The light was gone too — going, going, gone.
She stayed for a moment. As she reached her door the wind rose, sifting through the grass, rising to her chin.
IV
The two figures met, unconsciously, without spoken arrangement, pushed towards one another by destiny, as they had been meeting now continuously during the last weeks.
Almost always at this hour; almost always at this place. On the sandy path in the green hollow below the Cathedral, above the stream, the hollow under the opposite hill, the hill where the field was, the field where they had the Fair.
Down into this green depth the sunset could not strike, and the chimes, telling over so slowly and so sweetly the three-quarters, filtered down like a memory, a reiteration of an old promise, a melody almost forgotten. But above her head the woman, looking up, could see the rose change to orange and could watch the cloud, like a pool of green water, extend and rest, lying like a sheet of glass behind which the orange gleamed.
They met always thus, she coming from the town as though turning upwards through the tangled path to her home in the Precincts, he sauntering slowly, his hands behind his back, as though he had been wandering there to think out some problem....
Sometimes he did not come, sometimes she could not. They never stayed mor
e than ten minutes there together. No one from month to month at that hour crossed that desolate path.
To-day he began impetuously. “If you hadn’t come to-night, I think I would have gone to find you. I had to see you. No, I had nothing to say. Only to see you. But I am so lonely in that house. I always knew I was lonely — never more than when I was married — but now.... If I hadn’t these ten minutes most days I’d die, I think....”
They didn’t touch one another, but stood opposite gazing, face into face.
“What are we to do?” he said. “It can’t be wicked just to meet like this and to talk a little.”
“I’d like you to know,” she answered, “that you and my son — you are all I have in the world. The two of you. And my son has some secret from me.
“I have been so lonely too. But I don’t feel lonely any more. Your friendship for me....”
“Yes, I am your friend. Think of me like that. Your friend from the first moment I saw you — you so quiet and gentle and unhappy. I realized your unhappiness instantly. No one else in this place seemed to notice it. I believe God meant us to be friends, meant me to bring you happiness — a little....”
“Happiness?” she shivered. “Isn’t it cold to-night? Do you see that strange green cloud? Ah, now it is gone. All the light is going.... Do you believe in God?”
He came closer to her. His hand touched her arm.
“Yes,” he answered fiercely. “And He means me to care for you.” His hand, trembling, stroked her arm. She did not move. His hand, shaking, touched her neck. He bent forward and kissed her neck, her mouth, then her eyes.
She leant her head wearily for an instant on his shoulder, then, whispering good-night, she turned and went quietly up the path.
Chapter II
Souls on Sunday
I must have been thirteen or fourteen years of age — it may have been indeed in this very year ‘97 — when I first read Stevenson’s story of Treasure Island. It is the fashion, I believe, now with the Clever Solemn Ones to despise Stevenson as a writer of romantic Tushery,
All the same, if it’s realism they want I’m still waiting to see something more realistic than Pew or Long John Silver. Realism may depend as truly on a blind man’s tap with his stick upon the ground as on any number of adulteries.
In those young years, thank God, I knew nothing about realism and read the tale for what it was worth. And it was worth three hundred bags of gold. Now, on looking back, it seems to me that the spirit that overtook our town just at this time was very like the spirit that seized upon Dr. Livesey, young Hawkins and the rest when they discovered the dead Buccaneer’s map. This is no forced parallel. It was with a real sense of adventure that the Whispering began about the Brandons and Ronder and the Pybus St. Anthony living and the rest of it. Where did the Whispering start? Who can ever tell?
Our Polchester Whispering was carried on and fostered very largely by our servants. As in every village and town in Glebeshire, the intermarrying that had been going on for generations was astonishing. Every servant- maid, every errand-boy, every gardener and coachman in Polchester was cousin, brother or sister to every other servant-maid, errand-boy, gardener and coachman. They made, these people, a perfect net about our town.
The things that they carried from house to house, however, were never the actual things; they were simply the material from which the actual things were made. Nor was the construction of the actual tale positively malicious; it was only that our eyes were caught by the drama of life and we could not help but exclaim with little gasps and cries at the wonderful excitement of the history that we saw. Our treasure-hunting was simply for the fun of the thrill of the chase, not at all that we wished harm to a soul in the world. If, on occasion, a slight hint of maliciousness did find its place with us, it was only because in this insecure world it is delightful to reaffirm our own security as we watch our neighbours topple over. We do not wish them to “topple,” but if somebody has got to fall we would rather it were not ourselves.
Brandon had been for so long so remarkable a figure in our world that the slightest stir of the colours in his picture was immediately noticeable. From the moment of Falk’s return from Oxford it was expected that something “would happen.”
It often occurs that a situation between a number of people is vague and indefinite, until a certain moment, often quite undramatic and negative in itself, arrives, when the situation suddenly fixes itself and stands forward, set full square to the world, as a definite concrete fact. There was a certain Sunday in the April of this year that became for the Archdeacon and a number of other people such a definite crisis — and yet it might quite reasonably have been said at the end of it that nothing very much had occurred.
Everything seemed to happen in Polchester on Sundays. For one thing more talking was done on Sunday than on all the other days of the week together. Then the Cathedral itself came into its full glory on that day. Every one gathered there, every one talked to every one else before parting, and the long spaces and silences and pauses of the day allowed the comments and the questions and the surmises to grow and swell and distend into gigantic images before night took every one and stretched them upon their backs to dream.
What the Archdeacon liked was an “off” Sunday, when he had nothing to do save to walk majestically into his place in the choir stall, to read, perhaps, a Lesson, to talk gravely to people who came to have tea with him after the Sunday Evensong, to reflect lazily, after Sunday supper, his long legs stretched out in front of him, a pipe in his mouth, upon the goodness and happiness and splendour of the Cathedral and the world and his own place in it. Such a Sunday was a perfect thing — and such a Sunday April 18 ought to have been...alas! it was not so.
It began very early, somewhere about seven in the morning, with a horrible incident. The rule on Sundays was that the maid knocked at half-past six on the door and gave the Archdeacon and his wife their tea. The Archdeacon lay luxuriously drinking it until exactly a quarter to seven, then he sprang out of bed, had his cold bath, performed his exercises, and shaved in his little dressing-room. At about a quarter past seven, nearly dressed, he returned into the bedroom, to find Mrs. Brandon also nearly dressed. On this particular day while he drank his tea his wife appeared to be sleeping; that did not make him bound out of bed any the less noisily-after twenty years of married life you do not worry about such things; moreover it was quite time that his wife bestirred herself. At a quarter past seven he came into the bedroom in his shirt and trousers, humming “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” It was a fine spring morning, so he flung up the window and looked out into the Precinct, fresh and dewy in the morning sun, silent save for the inquisitive reiteration of an early jackdaw. Then he turned back, and, to his amazement, saw that his wife was lying, her eyes wide open, staring in front of her.
“My dear!” he cried. “Aren’t you well?”
“I’m perfectly well,” she answered him, her eyes maintaining their fixed stare. The tone in which she said these words was quite new — it was not submissive, it was not defensive, it was indifferent.
She must be ill. He came close to the bed.
“Do you realise the time?” he asked. “Twenty minutes past seven. I’m sure you don’t want to keep me waiting.”
She didn’t answer him. Certainly she must be ill. There was something strange about her eyes.
“You must be ill,” he repeated. “You look ill. Why didn’t you say so? Have you got a headache?”
“I’m not ill. I haven’t got a headache, and I’m not coming to Early Service.”
“You’re not ill, and you’re not coming...” he stammered in his amazement. “You’ve forgotten. There isn’t late Celebration.”
She gave him no answer, but turned on her side, closing her eyes.
He came right up to the bed, frowning down upon her.
“Amy — what does this mean? You’re not ill, and yet you’re not coming to Celebration? Why? I insist upon an answer.”
> She said nothing.
He felt that anger, of which he had tried now for many years to beware, flooding his throat.
With tremendous self-control he said quietly: “What is the matter with you, Amy? You must tell me at once.”
She did not open her eyes but said in a voice so low that he scarcely caught the words:
“There is nothing the matter. I am not ill, and I’m not coming to Early Service.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t wish to go.”
For a moment he thought that he was going to bend down and lift her bodily out of bed. His limbs felt as though they were prepared for such an action.
But to his own surprised amazement he did nothing, he said nothing. He looked at the bed, at the hollow where his head had been, at her head with her black hair scattered on the pillow, at her closed eyes, then he went away into his dressing-room. When he had finished dressing he came back into the bedroom, looked across at her, motionless, her eyes still closed, lying on her side, felt the silence of the room, the house, the Precincts broken only by the impertinent jackdaw.
He went downstairs.
Throughout the Early Celebration he remained in a condition of amazed bewilderment. From his position just above the altar-rails he could see very clearly the Bishop’s Tomb; the morning sun reflected in purple colours from the East window played upon its blue stone. It caught the green ring and flashed splashes of fire from its heart. His mind went back to that day, not so very long ago, when, with triumphant happiness, he had seemed to share in the Bishop’s spirit, to be dust of his dust, and bone of his bone. That had been the very day, he remembered, of Falk’s return from Oxford. Since that day everything had gone wrong for him — Falk, the Elephant, Ronder, Foster, the Chapter. And now his wife! Never in all the years of his married life had she spoken to him as she had done that morning. She must be on the edge of a serious illness, a very serious illness. Strangely a new concern for her, a concern that he had never felt in his life before, arose in his heart. Poor Amy — and how tiresome if she were ill, the house all at sixes and sevens! With a shock he realised that his mind was not devotional. He swung himself back to the service, looking down benevolently upon the two rows of people waiting patiently to come in their turn to the altar steps.