by Hugh Walpole
Before he realised, he was close to the Black Bishop’s Tomb. The dark grim face seemed to-day to wear a triumphant smile beneath the black beard. A shaft of sunlight played upon the marble like a searchlight upon water; the gold of the ironwork and the green ring and the tracery on the scrolled borders jumped under the sunlight like living things.
Ronder, moved as always by beauty, smiled as though in answer to the dead Bishop.
“Why! you’re the most alive thing in this Cathedral,” he thought to himself.
“Pretty good bit of work, isn’t it?” he heard at his elbow. He turned and saw Davray, the painter. The man had been pointed out to him in the street; he knew his reputation. He was inclined to be interested in the man, in any one who had a wider, broader view of life than the citizens of the town. Davray had not been drinking for several weeks; and always towards the end of one of his sober bouts he was gentle, melancholy, the true artist in him rising for one last view of the beauty that there was in the world before the inevitable submerging.
He had, on this occasion, been sober for a longer period than usual; he felt weak and faint, as though he had been without food, and his favourite vice, that had been approaching closer and closer to him during these last days, now leered at him, leaning towards him from the other side of the gilded scrolls of the tomb.
“Yes, it’s a very fine thing.” He cleared his throat. “You’re Canon Ronder, are you not?”
“Yes, I am.”
“My name’s Davray. You probably heard of me as a drunkard who hangs about the town doing no good. I’m quite sure you don’t want to speak to me or know me, but in here, where it’s so quiet and so beautiful, one may know people whom it wouldn’t be nice to know outside.”
Ronder looked at him. The man’s face, worn now and pinched and sharp, must once have had its fineness.
“You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Davray,” Ronder said. “I’m very glad indeed to know you.”
“Well, of course, you parsons have got to know everybody, haven’t you? And the sinners especially. That’s your job. But I’m not a sinner to-day. I haven’t drunk anything for weeks, although don’t congratulate me, because I’m certainly not going to hold out much longer. There’s no hope of redeeming me, Canon Ronder, even if you have time for the job.”
Ronder smiled.
“I’m not going to preach to you,” he said, “you needn’t be afraid.”
“Well, let’s forget all that. This Cathedral is the very place, if you clergymen had any sense of proportion, where you should be ashamed to preach. It laughs at you.”
“At any rate the Bishop does,” said Ronder, looking down at the tomb.
“No, but all of it,” said Davray. Instinctively they both looked up. High above them, in the very heart of the great Cathedral tower, a mist, reflected above the windows until it was coloured a very faint rose, trembled like a sea about the black rafters and rounded pillars. Even as they looked some bird flew twittering from corner to corner.
“When I’m worked up,” said Davray, “which I’m not to-day, I just long to clear all you officials out of it. I laugh sometimes to think how important you think yourselves and how unimportant you really are. The Cathedral laughs too, and once and again stretches out a great lazy finger and just flicks you away as it would a spider’s web. I hope you don’t think me impertinent.”
“Not in the least,” said Ronder; “some of us even may feel just as you do about it.”
“Brandon doesn’t.” Davray moved away. “I sometimes think that when I’m properly drunk one day I’ll murder that man. His self-sufficiency and conceit are an insult to the Cathedral. But the Cathedral knows. It bides its time.”
Ronder looked gravely at the melancholy, ineffective figure with the pale pointed beard, and the weak hands. “You speak very confidently, Mr. Davray,” he said. “As with all of us, you judge others by yourself. When you know what the Cathedral’s attitude to yourself is, you’ll be able to see more clearly.”
“To myself!” Davray answered excitedly. “It has none! To myself? Why, I’m nobody, nothing. It doesn’t have to begin to consider me. I’m less than the dung the birds drop from the height of the tower. But I’m humble before it. I would let its meanest stone crush the life out of my body, and be glad enough. At least I know its power, its beauty. And I adore it! I adore it!”
He looked up as he spoke; his eyes seemed to be eagerly searching for some expected face.
Ronder disliked both melodrama and sentimentality. Both were here.
“Take my advice,” he said smiling. “Don’t think too much about the place...I’m glad that we met. Good afternoon.”
Davray did not seem to have noticed him; he was staring down again at the Bishop’s Tomb. Ronder walked away. A strange man! A strange day! How different people were! Neither better nor worse, but just different. As many varieties as there were particles of sand on the seashore.
How impossible to be bored with life. Nevertheless, entering his own home he was instantly bored. He found there, having tea with his aunt and sitting beneath the Hermes, so that the contrast made her doubly ridiculous, Julia Preston. Julia Preston was to him the most boring woman in Polchester. To herself she was the most important. She was a widow and lived in a little green house with a little green garden in the Polchester outskirts. She was as pretty as she had been twenty years before, exactly the same, save that what nature had, twenty years ago, done for the asking, it now did under compulsion. She believed the whole world in love with her and was therefore a thoroughly happy woman. She had a healthy interest in the affairs of her neighbours, however small they might be, and believed in “Truth, Beauty, and the Improvement of the Lower Classes.”
“Dear Canon Ronder, how nice this is!” she exclaimed. “You’ve been hard at work all the afternoon, I know, and want your tea. How splendid work is! I often think what would life be without it’.”
Ronder, who took trouble with everybody, smiled, sat down near to her and looked as though he loved her.
“Well, to be quite honest, I haven’t been working very hard. Just seeing a few people.”
“Just seeing a few people!” Mrs. Preston used a laugh that was a favourite of hers because she had once been told that it was like “a tinkling bell.” “Listen to him! As though that weren’t the hardest thing in the world. Giving out! Giving out! What is so exhausting, and yet what so worth while in the end? Unselfishness! I really sometimes feel that is the true secret of life.”
“Have one of those little cakes, Julia,” said Miss Ronder drily. She, unlike her nephew, bothered about very few people indeed. “Make a good tea.”
“I will, as you want me to, dear Alice,” said Mrs. Preston. “Oh, thank you, Canon Ronder! How good of you; ah, there! I’ve dropped my little bag. It’s under that table. Thank you a thousand times! And isn’t it strange about Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris?”
“Isn’t what strange?” asked Miss Ronder, regarding her guest with grim cynicism.
“Oh well — nothing really, except that every one’s asking what they can find in common. They’re always together. Last Monday Aggie Combermere met her coming out of the Rectory, then Ellen Stiles saw them in the Precincts last Sunday afternoon, and I saw them myself this morning in the High Street.”
“My dear Mrs. Preston,” said Ronder, “why shouldn’t they go about together?”
“No reason at all,” said Mrs. Preston, blushing very prettily, as she always did when she fancied that any one was attacking her. “I’m sure that I’m only too glad that poor Mrs. Brandon has found a friend. My motto in life is, ‘Let us all contribute to the happiness of one another to the best of our strength.’
“Truly, that’s a thing we can all do, isn’t it? Life isn’t too bright for some people, I can’t help thinking. And courage is the thing. After all, it isn’t life that is important but simply how brave you are.
“At least that’s my poor little idea of it. But it does seem a little odd about
Mrs. Brandon. She’s always kept so much to herself until now.”
“You worry too much about others, dear Julia,” said Miss Ronder.
“Yes, I really believe I do. Why, there’s my bag gone again! Oh, how good of you, Canon! It’s under that chair. Yes. I do. But one can’t help one’s nature, can one? I often tell myself that it’s really no credit to me being unselfish. I was simply born that way. Poor Jack used to say that he wished I would think of myself more! I think we were meant to share one another’s burdens. I really do. And what Mrs. Brandon can see in Mr. Morris is so odd, because really he isn’t an interesting man.”
“Let me get you some more tea,” said Ronder.
“No, thank you. I really must be going. I’ve been here an unconscionable time. Oh! there’s my handkerchief. How silly of me! Thank you so much!”
She got up and prepared to depart, looking so pretty and so helpless that it was really astonishing that the Hermes did not appreciate her.
“Good-bye, dear Canon. No, I forbid you to come out. Oh, well, if you will. I hear everywhere of the splendid work you’re doing. Don’t think it flattery, but I do think we needed you here. What we have wanted is a message — something to lift us all up a little. It’s so easy to see nothing but the dreary round, isn’t it? And all the time the stars are shining.... At least that’s how it seems to me.”
The door closed; the room was suddenly silent. Miss Ronder sat without moving, her eyes staring in front of her.
Soon Ronder returned.
Miss Ronder said nothing. She was the one human being who had power to embarrass him. She was embarrassing him now.
“Aren’t things strange?” he said. “I’ve seen four different people this afternoon. They have all of their own accord instantly talked about Brandon, and abused him. Brandon is in the air. He’s in danger.”
Miss Ronder looked her nephew straight between the eyes.
“Frederick,” she said, “how much have you had to do with this?”
“To do with this? To do with what?”
“All this talk about the Brandons.”
“I! Nothing at all.”
“Nonsense. Don’t tell me. Ever since you set foot in this town you’ve been determined that Brandon should go. Are you playing fair?”
He got up, stood opposite her, legs apart, his hands crossed behind his broad back.
“Fair? Absolutely.”
Her eyes were full of distress. “Through all these years,” she said, “I’ve never truly known you. All I know is that you’ve always got what you wanted. You’re going to get what you want now. Do it decently.”
“You needn’t be afraid,” he said.
“I am afraid,” she said. “I love you, Fred; I have always loved you. I’d hate to lose that love. It’s one of my most precious possessions.”
He answered her slowly, as though he were thinking things out. “I’ve always told you the truth,” he said; “I’m telling you the truth now. Of course I want Brandon to go, and of course he’s going. But I haven’t to move a finger in the matter. It’s all advancing without my agency. Brandon is ruining himself. Even if he weren’t, I’m quite square with him. I fought him openly at the Chapter Meeting the other day. He hates me for it.”
“And you hate him.”
“Hate him? Not the least in the world. I admire and like him. If only he were in a less powerful position and were not in my way, I’d be his best friend. He’s a fine fellow — stupid, blind, conceited, but finer made than I am. I like him better than any man in the town.”
“I don’t understand you”; she dropped her eyes from his face. “You’re extraordinary.”
He sat down again as though he recognised that the little contest was closed.
“Is there anything in this, do you think? This chatter about Mrs. Brandon and Morris.”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of talk beginning. Ellen Stiles is largely responsible, I fancy.”
“Mrs. Brandon and Morris! Good Lord! Have you ever heard of a man called Davray?”
“Yes, a drunken painter, isn’t he? Why?”
“I talked to him in the Cathedral this afternoon. He has a grudge against Brandon too...Well, I’m going up to the study.”
He bent over, kissed her forehead tenderly and left the room.
Throughout that evening he was uncomfortable, and when he was uncomfortable he was a strange being. His impulses, his motives, his intentions were like a sheaf of corn bound tightly about by his sense of comfort and well-being. When that sense was disturbed everything fell apart and he seemed to be facing a new world full of elements that he always denied. His aunt had a greater power of disturbing him than had any other human being. He knew that she spoke what she believed to be the truth; he felt that, in spite of her denials, she knew him. He was often surprised at the eagerness with which he wanted her approval.
As he sat back in his chair that evening in Bentinck-Major’s comfortable library and watched the other, this sense of discomfort persisted so strongly that he found it very difficult to let his mind bite into the discussion. And yet this meeting was immensely important to him. It was the first obvious result of the manoeuvring of the last months. This was definitely a meeting of Conspirators, and all of those engaged in it, with one exception, knew that that was so. Bentinck-Major knew it, and Foster and Ryle and Rogers. The exception was Martin, a young Minor Canon, who had the living of St. Joseph’s-in-the-Fields, a slum parish in the lower part of the town.
Martin had been invited because he was the best clergyman in Polchester. Young though he was, every one was already aware of his strength, integrity, power with the men of the town, sense of humour and intelligence. There was, perhaps, no man in the whole of Polchester whom Ronder was so anxious to have on his side.
He was a man with a scorn of any intrigue, deeply religious, but human and impatient of humbug.
Ronder knew that he was the Polchester clergyman beyond all others who would in later years come to great power, although at present he had nothing save his Minor Canonry and small living. He was not perhaps a deeply read man, he was of no especial family nor school and had graduated at Durham University. In appearance he was common-place, thin, tall, with light sandy hair and mild good-tempered eyes. It had been Ronder’s intention that he should be invited. Foster, who was more responsible for the meeting than any one, had protested.
“Martin — what’s the point of Martin?”
“You’ll see in five years’ time,” Ronder had answered.
Now, as Ronder looked round at them all, he moved restlessly in his chair.
Was it true that his aunt was changing her opinion of him? Would he have to deal, during the coming months, with persistent disapproval and opposition from her? And it was so unfair. He had meant absolutely what he said, that he liked Brandon and wished him no harm. He did believe that it was for the good of the town that Brandon should go....
He was pulled up by Foster, who was asking him to tell them exactly what it was that they were to discuss. Instinctively he looked at Martin as he spoke. As always, with the first word there came over him a sense of mastery and happiness, a desire to move people like pawns, a readiness to twist any principle, moral and ethical, if he might bend it to his purpose. Instinctively he pitched his voice, formed his mouth, spread his hands upon the broad arms of his chair exactly as an actor fills in his part.
“I object a little,” he said, laughing, “to Foster’s suggestion that I am responsible for our talking here. I’ve no right to be responsible for anything when I’ve been in the place so short a time. All the same, I don’t want to pretend to any false modesty. I’ve been in Polchester long enough to be fond of it, and I’m going to be fonder of it still before I’ve done. I don’t want to pretend to any sentimentality either, but there are broader issues than merely the fortunes of this Cathedral in danger.
“Because I feel the danger, I intend to speak out about it, and get any one on my side I can. When I find
that Canon Foster who has been here so long and loves the Cathedral so passionately and so honestly, if I may say so, feels as I do, then I’m only strengthened in my determination. I don’t care who says that I’ve no right to push myself forward about this. I’m not pushing myself forward.
“As soon as some one else will take the cause in hand I’ll step back, but I’m not going to see the battle lost simply because I’m afraid of what people will say of me.... Well, this is all fine words. The point simply is that, as every one knows, poor Morrison is desperately ill and the living of Pybus St. Anthony may fall vacant at any moment. The appointment is a Chapter appointment. The living isn’t anything very tremendous in itself, but it has been looked upon for years as the jumping-off place for preferment in the diocese. Time after time the man who has gone there has become the most important influence here. Men are generally chosen, as I understand it, with that in view. These are, of course, all commonplaces to you, but I’m recapitulating them because it makes my point the stronger. Morrison with all his merits was not out of the way intellectually. This time we want an exceptional man.
“I’ve only been here a few months, but I’ve noticed many things, and I will definitely say that the Cathedral is at a crisis in its history. Perhaps the mere fact that this is Jubilee Year makes us all more ready to take stock than we would otherwise have been. But it is not only that. The Church is being attacked from all sides. I don’t believe that there has ever been a time when the west of England needed new blood, new thought, new energy more than it does at this time. The vacancy at Pybus will offer a most wonderful opportunity to bring that force among us. I should have thought every one would realise that.