by Hugh Walpole
Suddenly his eyes recognised hers. His hands dropped. He crawled from the bed. Then he felt his way, blindly, out of the room.
Chapter V
Tuesday, June 22: I. The Cathedral
The Great Day arrived, escorted sumptuously with skies of burning blue. How many heads looked out of how many windows, the country over, that morning! In Polchester it was considered as only another proof of the esteem in which that city was held by the Almighty. The Old Lady might deserve and did unquestionably obtain divinely condescending weather for her various excursions, but it was nothing to that which the Old Town got and deserved.
Deserved or no, the town rose to the occasion. The High Street was swimming in flags and bunting; even in Seatown most of the grimy windows showed those little cheap flags that during the past week hawkers had been so industriously selling. From quite early in the morning the squeak and scream of the roundabouts in the Fair could be heard dimly penetrating the sanctities and privacies of the Precincts. But it was the Cathedral bells, pealing, crashing, echoing, rocking, as early as nine o’clock in the morning, that first awoke the consciousness of most of the Polcastrians to the glories of the day.
I suppose that nearly all souls that morning subconsciously divided the order of the festival into three periods; in the morning the Cathedral and its service, in the afternoon the social, friendly, man-to-man celebration, and in the evening, torch-light, bonfire, skies ablaze, drink and love. Certain it is that many eyes turned towards the Cathedral accustomed for many years to look in quite other directions. There was to be a grand service, they said, with “trumpets and shawms” and the big drum, and the old Bishop preaching, making, in all probability, his very last public appearance. Up from the dark mysteries of Seatown, down from the chaste proprieties of the villas above Orange Street, from the purlieus of the market, from the shops of the High Street, sailors and merchantmen, traders and sea-captains and, from the wild fastness of the Fair, gipsies with silver rings in their ears and, perhaps, who can tell? bells on their dusky toes.
Very early were Lawrence and Cobbett about their duties. This was, in all probability, Lawrence’s last Great Day before the final and all-judging one, and well both he and Cobbett were aware of it. Cobbett could see himself that morning almost stepping into the old man’s shoes, and the old man himself was not well this morning — not well at all. Rheumatism, gout, what hadn’t he got? — and, above all, that strange, mysterious pain somewhere in his very vitals, a pain that was not precisely a pain, too dull and homely for that, but a warning, a foreboding.
On an ordinary day, in spite of his dislike of allowing Cobbett any of those duties that were so properly his own, he would have stayed in bed, but to-day? — no, thank you! On such a day as this he would defy the Devil himself and all his red-hot pincers! So there he was in his long purple gown, with his lovely snow-white beard, and his gold-topped staff, patronising Mrs. Muffit (who superintended the cleaning) and her ancient servitors, seeing that the places for the Band (just under the choir- screen) and for the extra members of the choir were all in order, and, above all, that the Bishop’s Throne up by the altar was guiltless of a speck of dust, of a shadow of a shadow of disorder. Cobbett saw, beyond any question or doubt, death in the old man’s face, and suddenly, to his own amazement, was sorry. For years now he had been waiting for the day when he should succeed the tiresome old fool, for years he had cursed him for a thousand pomposities, blunders, tedious garrulities, and now, suddenly, he was sorry. What had come over him? But he wasn’t a bad old man; plucky, too; you could see how he was suffering. They had, after all, been companions together for so many years....
Quite early in the morning arrivals began — visitors from the country most likely, sitting there at the back of the nave, bathed in the great silence and the dim light, just looking and wondering and expecting. Some of them wanted to move about and examine the brasses and the tombs and the windows — yes, move about with their families, and their bags of sandwiches, and their oranges. But not this morning, oh, dear, no! They could come in or go out, but if they came in they must stay quiet. Did they but subterraneously giggle, Cobbet was on their tracks in no time.
The light flooded in, throwing great splashes and lakes of blue and gold and purple on to flag and pillar. Great in its strength, magnificent in its beauty, the Cathedral prepared....
Mrs. Combermere walked rather solemnly that morning from her house to the Cathedral. In spite of the lovely morning she was feeling suddenly old. Things like Jubilees do date you — no doubt about it. Nearly fifty. Three- quarters of life behind her and what had she to show for it? An unlucky marriage, much physical health and fun, some friends — but, at the last, lonely — lonely as perhaps every human being in this queer world was. That old woman now preparing to ride in fantastic procession before her worshipping subjects, she was lonely too. Poor, little, lonely, old woman! Well, then, Charity to all and sundry — Charity, kindliness, the one and only thing. Aggie Combermere was not a sentimental woman, nor did she see life falsely, but she was suddenly aware, walking under the blazing blue sky, that she had been unkind, for amusement’s sake, more often than she need.... Well, why not? She was ready to allow people to have a shy at herself — any one who liked.... “’Ere you are! Old Aunt Sally! Three shies a penny!” And she was an Aunt Sally, a ludicrous creature, caring for her dogs more than for any living creature, shovelling food into her mouth for no particular purpose, doing physical exercises in the morning, and nearly fifty!
She found then, just as she reached the Arden Gate, that, to her own immense surprise, it was not of herself that, all this time, she had been thinking, but rather of Brandon and the Brandon family. The Brandons! What an extraordinary affair! The Town was now bursting its fat sides with excitement over it all! The Town was now generally aware (but how it was aware no one quite knew) that there was a mysterious letter that Mrs. Brandon had written to Morris, and that Miss Milton, librarian who was, had obtained this letter and had taken it to Ronder. And the next move, the next! the next! Oh, tell us! Tell us! The Town stands on tiptoe; its hair on end. Let us see! Let us see! Let us not miss the tiniest detail of this extraordinary affair!
And really how extraordinary! First the boy runs off with that girl; then Mrs. Brandon, the quietest, dullest woman for years and years, throws her cap over the mill and behaves like a madwoman; and Johnny St. Leath, they say, is in love with the daughter, and his old mother is furious; and Brandon, they say, wants to cut Ronder’s throat. Ronder! Mrs. Combermere paused, partly to get her breath, partly to enjoy for an instant the shining, glittering grass, dotted with figures, stretching like a carpet from the vast greyness of the Cathedral. Ronder! There was a remarkable man! Mrs. Combermere was conquered by him, in spite of herself. How, in seven short months, he had conquered everybody! What an amusing talker, what a good preacher, what a clever business head! And yet she did not really like him. His praises now were in every one’s mouth, but she did not really like him. Old Brandon was still her favourite, her old friend of ten years; but there was no doubt that he was behind the times, Ronder had shown them that! No use living in the ‘Eighties any longer. But she was fond of him, she did not want him to be unhappy — and unhappy he was, that any one could see. Most of all, she did not want him to do anything foolish — and he might, his temper was strange, he was not so strong as he looked; he had felt his son’s escapade terribly — and now his wife!
“Well, if I had a wife like that,” was Mrs. Combermere’s conclusion before she joined Ellen Stiles and Julia Preston, “I’d let her go off with any one! Pay any one to take her!”
Ellen was, of course, full of it all. “My dear, what do you think is the latest! They say that the Archdeacon threatens to poison the whole of the Chapter if they don’t let Forsyth have Pybus, and that Boadicea has ordered Johnny to take a voyage to the Canary Islands for his health, and that he says he’ll see her shot first! And Miss Milton is selling the letter for a thousand pounds to
the first comer!”
Mrs. Combermere stopped her sharply— “Mind your own business, Ellen. The whole thing now is past a joke. And as to Johnny St. Leath, he shows his good taste. There isn’t a sweeter, prettier girl in England than Joan Brandon, and he’s lucky if he gets her.”
“I don’t want to be ill-natured,” said Ellen Stiles rather plaintively, “but that family would test anybody’s reticence. We’d better go in or old Lawrence will be letting some one have our seats.”
Joan came with her mother slowly across the grass. In her dress was this letter:
Dearest, dearest, dearest Joan — The first thing you have thoroughly to realise is that it doesn’t matter what you say or what mother says or what any one says. Mother’s angry. Of course she is. She’s been angry a thousand million times before and will be a thousand million times again. But it doesn’t mean anything. Mother likes to be angry, it does her good, and the longer she’s angry with you the better she’ll like you, if you understand what I mean. What I want to get into your head is that you can’t alter anything. Of course if you didn’t love me it would be another matter, and you tried to tell me you didn’t love me yesterday just for my good, but you did it so badly that you had to admit yourself that it was a failure. Don’t talk about your brother; he’s a fine fellow, and I’m going to look him up when I’m in London next month. Don’t talk about not seeing me, because you can’t help seeing me if I’m right in front of you. I’m no silph. (The way he spelt it.) I’m quite ready to wait for a certain time anyway. But marry we will, and happy we’ll be for ever and ever! — Your adoring
JOHNNY.
And what was she to do about it? She was certainly very unmodern and inexperienced by the standards of to-day — on the other hand, she was a very long way indeed from the Lily Dales and Eleanor Hardings of Mr. Trollope. She had not told her father — that she was resolved to do so soon as he seemed a little less worried by his affairs; but say that she did not love Johnny she had found that she could not, and as to damaging him by marrying him, his love for her had strengthened her own pride in herself. She did not understand his love, it was astounding to her after the indifference with which her own family had always treated her. But there it was: he, with all his experience of life, loved her more than any one else in the world, so there must be something in her. And she knew there was; privately she had always known it. As to his mother — well, so long as Johnny loved her she could face anybody.
So this wonderful morning she was radiantly happy. Child as she was, she adored this excitement. It was splendid of it to be this glorious time just when she was having her own glorious time! Splendid of the weather to be so beautiful, of the bells to clash, of every one to wear their best clothes, of the Jubilee to arrange itself so exactly at the right moment! And could it be only last Saturday that he had spoken to her? And it seemed centuries, centuries ago!
She chattered eagerly, smiling at Betty Callender, and then at the D’Arcy girls, and then at Mrs. Bentinck-Major. She supposed that they were all talking about her. Well, let them. There was nothing to be ashamed of. Quite the contrary. She did not notice her mother’s silence. But she had noticed, before they left the house, how ill her mother was looking. A very bad night — another of her dreadful headaches. Her father had not come in to breakfast at all. Everything had been wrong at home since that day when Falk had been sent down from Oxford. She longed to put her arms around her father’s neck and hug him. Behind her own happiness, ever since the night of the Ball, there had been a longing, an aching urgent longing to pet him, comfort him, make love to him. And she would, too — as soon as all these festivities were over.
And then suddenly there were Johnny and his mother and his sisters walking towards the West door! What a situation! And then there was Johnny breaking away from his own family and hurrying towards them, lifting his hat, smiling!
How splendid he looked and how happy! And how happy she also was looking had she only known it!
“Good morning, Mrs. Brandon.”
Mrs. Brandon didn’t appear to remember him at all. Then suddenly, as though she had picked her conscience out of her pocket:
“Oh, good morning, Lord St. Leath.”
Joan, out of the corner, saw Boadicea, her head with its absurd bonnet high, striding indignantly ahead.
“What lovely weather, is it not?”
“Yes, aren’t we lucky? Good morning, Joan.”
“Good morning.”
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“Oh, yes, it is.”
“Are you going to see the Torchlight Procession to-night?”
“They come through the Precincts, you know.”
“Of course they do. We’re going to have five bonfires all around us. Mother’s afraid they’ll set the Castle on fire.”
They both laughed — much too happy to know what they were laughing at.
Mrs. Sampson joined them. Johnny and Joan walked ahead. Only two steps and they would be in the Cathedral.
“Did you get my letter?”
“Yes.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you.” This in a hoarse whisper.
“Johnny — you mustn’t — you know — we can’t — you know I oughtn’t — —”
They passed through into the Cathedral.
Mrs. Bentinck-Major came with Miss Ronder, slowly, across the grass. It was not necessary for them to hurry because they knew that their seats were reserved for them. Mrs. Bentinck-Major thought Miss Ronder “queer” because of the clever things that she said and of the odd fashion in which she always dressed. To say anything clever was, with Mrs. Bentinck-Major, at once to be classed as “queer.”
“It is hot!”
Miss Ronder, thin and piky above her stiff white collar, looked immaculately cool. “A lovely day,” she said, sniffing the colour and the warmth, and loving it.
Mrs. Bentinck-Major was thinking of the Brandon scandal, but it was one of her habits never to let her left-hand voice know what her right-hand brain was doing. Secretly she often wondered about sexual things — what people really did, whether they enjoyed what they did, and whether she would have enjoyed the same things had life gone that way with her instead of leading her to Bentinck-Major.
But she never, never spoke of such things. She was thinking now of Mrs. Brandon and Morris. They said that some one had found a letter, a disgraceful letter. How extraordinary!
“It’s loneliness,” suddenly said Miss Ronder, “that drives people to do the things they do.”
Mrs. Bentinck-Major started as though some one had struck her in the small of her back. Was the woman a witch? How amazing!
“I beg your pardon,” she said nervously.
“I was speaking,” said Miss Ronder in her clear incisive voice, “of one of our maids, who has suddenly engaged herself to the most unpleasing-looking butcher’s assistant you can imagine — all spots and stammer. Quite a pretty girl, too. But it’s fear of loneliness that does it. Wanting affection.”
Dear me! Mrs. Bentinck-Major had never had very much affection from Mr. Bentinck-Major, and had not very consciously missed it, but then she had a dog, a spaniel, whom she loved most dearly.
“We’re all lonely — all of us — to the very end,” said Miss Ronder, as though she was thinking of some one in especial. And she was. She was thinking of her nephew. “I shouldn’t wonder if the Queen isn’t feeling more lonely to-day than she has ever felt in all her life before.”
And then they saw that dreadful man, Davray, lurching along. He was lonely, but then he deserved to be, with his drink and all. Wicked man! Mrs. Bentinck-Major shivered. She didn’t know how he dared to go to church. He shouldn’t be allowed. On such a day, too. What would the Queen herself think, did she know?
The two ladies and Davray passed through the door at the same time.
And now every one was inside. The great bell dropped notes like heavy weights into a liquid well. For the cup of the Cathedral swam in colour, the ligh
t pouring through the great Rose window, and that multitude of persons seeming to sway like shadows beneath a sheet of water from amber to purple, from purple to crimson, from crimson to darkest green.
Individuality was lost. The Cathedral, thinking nothing of Kings and Queens, of history, of movement forward and retrograde, but only of itself and of the life that it had been given, that it now claimed for its own, with haughty confidence assumed its Power...the Power of its own Immortality that is neither man’s nor God’s.
The trumpets began. They rang out the Psalm that had been given them, and transformed it into a cry of exultant triumph. Their notes rose, were caught by the pillars, acclaimed, tossed higher, caught again in the eaves and corners of the great building, swinging backwards and forwards....
“Now listen to My greatness! You created Me for the Worship of your God!
“And now I am your God! Out of your forms and ceremonies you have made a new God! And I, thy God, am a jealous God....”
Ronder read the First Lesson.
“That’s Ronder,” the town-people whispered, “the new Canon. Oh! he’s clever. You should hear him preach!”
“Reads beautiful!” Gladys, the Brandons’ maid, whispered to Annie, the kitchen-maid. “I do like a bit of fine reading.”
By those accustomed to observe it was noticed that Ronder read with very much more assurance than he had done three months ago. It was as though he knew now where he was, as though he were settled down now and had his place — and it would take some very strong people to shift him from that place. Oh, yes. It would!
And Brandon read the Second Lesson. As usual, when he stepped down from the choir, slowly, impressively, pausing for a moment before he turned to the Lectern, strangers whispered to one another, “That’s a handsome parson, that is.” He seemed to hesitate again before going up as though he had stumbled over a step. Very slowly he read the opening words; slowly he continued.