Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)

by Hugh Walpole

  “Father, you’re hurt!”

  “Yes, I fell down — stumbled over something, coming up from the river.” He looked at her impatiently. “Well, well, what is it?”

  “Nothing, father — only they’re still keeping some dinner—”

  “I don’t want anything. Where is your mother?”

  “She hasn’t come back.”

  “Not come back? Why, where did she go to?”

  “I don’t know. Gladys says she went out about six.”

  He pushed past her into the passage. He went down into the hall; she followed him timidly. From the bottom of the stairs he saw the letter on the table, and he went straight to it. He tore open the envelope and read:

  I have left you for ever. All that I told you on Sunday night was true, and you may use that information as you please. Whatever may come to me, at least I know that I am never to live under the same roof with you again, and that is happiness enough for me, whatever other misery there may be in store for me. Now, at last, perhaps, you will realise that loneliness is worse than any other hell, and that’s the hell you’ve made me suffer for twenty years. Look around you and see what your selfishness has done for you. It will be useless to try to persuade me to return to you. I hope to God that I shall never see you again.

  AMY.

  He turned and said in his ordinary voice, “Your mother has left me.”

  He came across to her, suddenly caught her by the shoulders, and said: “Now, you’d better go, do you hear? They’ve all left me, your mother, Falk, all of them. They’ve fallen on me and beaten me. They’ve kicked me. They’ve spied on me and mocked me. Well, then, you join them. Do you hear? What do you stay for? Why do you remain with me? Do you hear? Do you hear?”

  She understood nothing. Her terror caught her like the wind. She crouched back against the bannisters, covering her face with her hand.

  “Don’t hit me, father. Please, please don’t hit me.”

  He stood over her, staring down at her.

  “It’s a plot, and you must be in it with the others.... Well, go and tell them they’ve won. Tell them to come and kick me again. I’m down now. I’m beaten; go and tell them to come in — to come and take my house and my clothes. Your mother’s gone — follow her to London, then.”

  He turned. She heard him go into the drawing-room.

  Suddenly, although she still did not understand what had happened, she knew that she must follow him and care for him. He had pulled the curtains aside and thrown up the windows.

  “Let them come in! Let them come in! I — I — —”

  Suddenly he turned towards her and held out his arms.

  “I can’t — I can’t bear any more.” He fell on his knees, burying his face in the shoulder of the chair. Then he cried:

  “Oh, God, spare me now, spare me! I cannot bear any more. Thou hast chastised me enough. Oh, God, don’t take my sanity from me — leave me that. Oh, God, leave me that! Thou hast taken everything else. I have been beaten and betrayed and deserted. I confess my wickedness, my arrogance, my pride, but it was in Thy service. Leave me my mind. Oh, God, spare me, spare me, and forgive her who has sinned so grievously against Thy laws. Oh, God, God, save me from madness, save me from madness.”

  In that moment Joan became a woman. Her love, her own life, she threw everything away.

  She went over to him, put her arms around his neck, kissed tim, fondled him, pressing her cheek against his.

  “Dear, dear father. I love you so. I love you so. No one shall hurt you. Father dear, father darling.”

  Suddenly the room was blazing with light. The Torchlight Procession tumbled into the Precincts. The Cathedral sprang into light; on all the hills the bonfires were blazing.

  Black figures scattered like dwarfs, pigmies, giants about the grass. The torches tossed and whirled and danced.

  The Cathedral rose from the darkness, triumphant in gold and fire.

  Book IV. The Last Stand

  Chapter I

  In Ronder’s House: Ronder, Wistons

  Every one has, at one time or another, known the experience of watching some friend or acquaintance moved suddenly from the ordinary atmosphere of every day into some dramatic region of crisis where he becomes, for a moment, far more than life-size in his struggle against the elements; he is lifted, like Siegmund in The Valkyrie, into the clouds for his last and most desperate duel.

  There was something of this feeling in the attitude taken in our town after the Jubilee towards Archdeacon Brandon. As Miss Stiles said (not meaning it at all unkindly), it really was very fortunate for everybody that the town had the excitement of the Pybus appointment to follow immediately the Jubilee drama; had it not been so, how flat would every one have been! And by the Pybus appointment she meant, of course, the Decline and Fall of Archdeacon Brandon, and the issue of his contest with delightful, clever Canon Ronder.

  The disappearance of Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris would have been excitement enough quite by itself for any one year. As every one said, the wives of Archdeacons simply did not run away with the clergymen of their town. It was not done. It had never, within any one’s living memory, been done before, whether in Polchester or anywhere else.

  Clergymen were, of course, only human like any one else, and so were their wives, but at least they did not make a public declaration of their failings; they remembered their positions, who they were and what they were.

  In one sense there had been no public declaration. Mrs. Brandon had gone up to London to see about some business, and Mr. Morris also happened to be away, and his sister-in-law was living on in the Rectory exactly as though nothing had occurred. However, that disguise could not hold for long, and every one knew exactly what had happened — well, if not exactly, every one had a very good individual version of the whole story.

  And through it all, above it, behind it and beyond it, towered the figure of the Archdeacon. He was the question, he the centre of the drama. There were a hundred different stories running around the town as to what exactly had happened to him during those Jubilee days. Was it true that he had taken Miss Milton by the scruff of her long neck and thrown her out of the house? Was it true that he had taken his coat off in the Cloisters and given Ronder two black eyes? (The only drawback to this story was that Ronder showed no sign of bruises.) Had he and Mrs. Brandon fought up and down the house for the whole of a night, Joan assisting? And, above all, what occurred at the Jubilee Fair? Had Brandon been set upon by a lot of ruffians? Was it true that Samuel Hogg had revenged himself for his daughter’s abduction? No one knew. No one knew anything at all. The only certain thing was that the Archdeacon had a bruise on his temple and a scratch on his cheek, and that he was “queer,” oh, yes, very queer indeed!

  It was finally about this “queerness” that the gossip of the town most persistently clung. Many people said that they had watched him “going queer” for a long while back, entirely forgetting that only a year ago he had been the most vigorous, healthiest, sanest man in the place. Old Puddifoot, with all sorts of nods, winks and murmurs, alluded to mysterious medical secrets, and “how much he could tell an’ he would,” and that “he had said years ago about Brandon....” Well, never mind what he had said, but it was all turning out exactly as, for years, he had expected.

  Nothing is stranger (and perhaps more fortunate) than the speed with which the past is forgotten. Brandon might have been all his days the odd, muttering, eye-wandering figure that he now appeared. Where was the Viking now? Where the finest specimen of physical health in all Glebeshire? Where the King and Crowned Monarch of Polchester?

  In the dust and debris of the broken past. “Poor old Archdeacon.” “A bit queer in the upper storey.” “Not to be wondered at after all the trouble he’s had.” “They break up quickly, those strong-looking men.” “Bit too pleased with himself, he was.” “Ah, well, he’s served his time; what we need are more modern men. You can’t deny that he was old-fashioned.”

  People wer
e not altogether to be blamed for this sudden sense that they were stepping into a new period, out of one room into another, so to speak. The Jubilee was responsible for that. It did mark a period, and looking back now after all these years one can see that that impression was a true one. The Jubilee of ‘97, the Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria — the end of the Victorian Era for Church as well as for State.

  And there were other places beside Polchester that could show their typical figures doomed, as it were, to die for their Period — no mean nor unworthy death after all.

  But no Polcastrian in ‘97 knew that that service in the Cathedral, that scratch on the Archdeacon’s cheek, that visit of Mrs. Brandon to London — that these things were for them the Writing on the Wall. June 1897 and August 1914 were not, happily for them, linked together in immortal significance — their eyes were set on the personal history of the men and women who were moving before them. Had Brandon in the pride of his heart not claimed God as his ally, would men have died at Ypres? Can any bounds be placed to one act of love and unselfishness, to a single deed of mean heart and malicious tongue?

  It was enough for our town that “Brandon and his ways” were out-of-date, and it was a lucky thing that as modern a man as Ronder had come amongst us.

  And yet not altogether. Brandon in prosperity was one thing, Brandon in misfortune quite another. He had been abominably treated. What had he ever done that was not actuated absolutely by zeal for the town and the Cathedral?

  And, after all, had that man Ronder acted straight? He was fair and genial enough outwardly, but who could tell what went on behind those round spectacles? There were strange stories of intrigue about. Had he not determined to push Brandon out of the place from the first moment of his arrival? And as far as this Pybus living went, it was all very well to be modern and advanced, but wasn’t Ronder advocating for the appointment a man who laughed at the Gospels and said that there were no such things as snakes and apples in the Garden of Eden? After all, he was a foreigner, and Brandon belonged to them. Poor old Brandon!

  Ronder was in his study, waiting for Wistons. Wistons had come to Polchester for a night to see his friend Foster. It was an entirely private visit, unknown to anybody save two or three of his friends among the clergy. He had asked whether Ronder could spare him half an hour. Ronder was delighted to spare it....

  Ronder was in the liveliest spirits. He hummed a little chant to himself as he paced his study, stopping, as was his habit, to touch something on his table, to push back a book more neatly into its row on the shelf, to stare for an instant out of the window into the green garden drenched with the afternoon sun.

  Yes, he was in admirable spirits. He had known some weeks of acute discomfort. That phase was over, his talk with Brandon in the Cloisters after the Cathedral service had closed it. On that occasion he had put himself entirely in the right, having been before that, under the eye of his aunt and certain critics in the town, ever so slightly in the wrong. Now he was justified. He had humbled himself before Brandon (when really there was no reason to do so), apologised (when truly there was not the slightest need for it) — Brandon had utterly rejected his apology, turned on him as though he were a thief and a robber — he had done all that he could, more, far more, than his case demanded.

  So his comfort, his dear consoling comfort, had returned to him completely. And with it had returned all his affection, his tenderness for Brandon. Poor man, deserted by his wife, past his work, showing as he so obviously did in the Jubilee week that his brain (never very agile) was now quite inert, poor man, poor, poor man! Ronder, as he walked his study, simply longed to do something for Brandon — to give him something, make him a generous present, to go to London and persuade his poor weak wife to return to him, anything, anything to make him happy again.

  Too sad to see the poor man’s pale face, restless eyes, to watch his hurried, uneasy walk, as though he were suspicious of every man. Everywhere now Ronder sang Brandon’s praises — what fine work he had done in the past, how much the Church owed him; where would Polchester have been in the past without him?

  “I assure you,” Ronder said to Mrs. Preston, meeting her in the High Street, “the Archdeacon’s work may be over, but when I think of what the Church owes him — —”

  To which Mrs. Preston had said: “Ah, Canon, how you search for the Beauty in human life! You are a lesson to all of us. After all, to find Beauty in even the meanest and most disappointing, that is our task!”

  There was no doubt but that Ronder had come magnificently through the Jubilee week. It had in every way strengthened and confirmed his already strong position. He had been everywhere; had added gaiety and sunshine to the Flower Show; had preached a most wonderful sermon at the evening service on the Tuesday; had addressed, from the steps of his house, the Torchlight Procession in exactly the right words; had patted all the children on the head at the Mayor’s tea for the townspeople; had enchanted everywhere. That for which he had worked had been accomplished, and accomplished with wonderful speed.

  He was firmly established as the leading Churchman in Polchester; only now let the Pybus living go in the right direction (as it must do), and he would have nothing more to wish for.

  He loved the place. As he looked down into the garden and thought of the years of pleasant comfort and happiness now stretching in front of him, his heart swelled with love of his fellow human beings. He longed, here and now, to do something for some one, to give some children pennies, some poor old men a good meal, to lend some one his pounds, to speak a good word in public for some one maligned, to —— —

  “Mr. Wistons, sir,” said the maid. When he turned round only his exceeding politeness prevented him from a whistle of astonishment. He had never seen a photograph of Wistons, and the man had never been described to him.

  From all that he had heard and read of him, he had pictured him a tall, lean ascetic, a kind of Dante and Savonarola in one, a magnificent figure of protest and abjuration. This man who now came towards him was little, thin, indeed, but almost deformed, seeming to have one shoulder higher than the other, and to halt ever so slightly on one foot. His face was positively ugly, redeemed only, as Ronder, who was no mean observer, at once perceived, by large and penetrating eyes. The eyes, indeed, were beautiful, of a wonderful softness and intelligence.

  His hair was jet black and thick; his hand, as it gripped Ronder’s, strong and bony.

  “I’m very glad to meet you, Canon Ronder,” he said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” His voice, as Mrs. Combermere long afterwards remarked, “has a twinkle in it.” It was a jolly voice, humorous, generous but incisive, and exceedingly clear. It had a very slight accent, so slight that no one could ever decide on its origin. The books said that Wistons had been born in London, and that his father had been Rector of Lambeth for many years; it was also quickly discovered by penetrating Polcastrians that he had a not very distant French ancestry. Was it Cockney? “I expect,” said Miss Stiles, “that he played with the little Lambeth children when he was small” — but no one really knew...

  The two men sat down facing one another, and Wistons looked strange indeed with his shoulders hunched up, his thin little legs like two cross-bones, one over the other, his black hair and pale face.

  “I feel rather like a thief in the night,” he said, “stealing down here. But Foster wanted me to come, and I confess to a certain curiosity myself.”

  “You would like to come to Pybus if things go that way?” Ronder asked him.

  “I shall be quite glad to come. On the other hand, I shall not be at all sorry to stay where I am. Does it matter very much where one is?”

  “Except that the Pybus living is generally considered a very important step in Church preferment. It leads, as a rule, to great things.”

  “Great things? Yes...” Wistons seemed to be talking to himself. “One thing is much like another. The more power one seems to have outwardly, the less very often one has in reality. However, if I’m call
ed I’ll come. But I wanted to see you, Canon Ronder, for a special purpose.”

  “Yes?” asked Ronder.

  “Of course I haven’t enquired in any way into the probabilities of the Pybus appointment. But I understand that there is very strong opposition to myself; naturally there would be. I also understand that, with the exception of my friend Foster, you are my strongest supporter in this matter. May I ask you why?”

  “Why?” repeated Ronder.

  “Yes, why? You may say, and quite justly, that I have no right at all to ask you that question. It should be enough for me, I know, to realise that there are certain people here who want me to come. It ought to be enough. But it isn’t. It isn’t. I won’t — I can’t come here under false pretences.”

  “False pretences!” cried Ronder. “I assure you, dear Mr. Wistons—”

  “Oh, yes, I know. I know what you will naturally tell me. But I have caught enough of the talk here — Foster in his impetuosity has been perhaps indiscreet — to realise that there has been, that there still is, a battle here between the older, more conservative body of opinion and the more modern school. It seems to me that I have been made the figure-head of this battle. To that I have no objection. It is not for the first time. But what I want to ask you, Canon Ronder, with the utmost seriousness, is just this:

  “Have you supported my appointment because you honestly felt that I was the best man for this particular job, or because — I know you will forgive me if this question sounds impertinent — you wished to score a point over some personal adversary?”

  The question was impertinent. There could be no doubt of it. Ronder ought at once to resent any imputation on his honesty. What right had this man to dip down into Ronder’s motives? The Canon stared from behind his glasses into those very bright and insistent eyes, and even as he stared there came once again that cold little wind of discomfort, that questioning, irritating wind, that had been laid so effectively, he thought, for ever to rest. What was this man about, attacking him like this, attacking him before, even, he had been appointed? Was it, after all, quite wise that Wistons should come here? Would that same comfort, so rightly valued by Ronder, be quite assured in the future if Wistons were at Pybus? Wouldn’t some nincompoop like Forsyth be perhaps, after all, his best choice?