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 thereisanything 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.
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.
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 werenotright 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.
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 more 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.
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 ofTreasure 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.
"Youmustbe 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.
At breakfast, however, there Mrs. Brandon was, looking quite her usual self, in the Sunday dress of grey silk, making the tea, quiet as she always was, answering questions submissively, patiently, "as the wife of an Archdeacon should." He tried to show her by his manner that he had been deeply shocked, but, unfortunately, he had been shocked, annoyed, indignant on so many occasions when there had been no real need for it, that to-day, when there was the occasion, he felt that he made no impression.
The bells pealed for morning service, the sun shone; as half-past ten approached, little groups of people crossed the Precincts and vanished into the mouth of the great West door. Now were Lawrence and Cobbett in their true glory--Lawrence was in his fine purple robe, the Sunday silk one. He stood at the far end of the nave, just under the choir-screen, waiting for the aristocracy, for whom the front seats were guarded with cords which only he might untie. How deeply pleased he was when some unfortunate stranger, ignorant in the ways of the Cathedral, walked, with startling clatter, up the whole length of the shining nave and endeavoured to penetrate one of these sacred defences! Majestically--staff in hand, he came forward, shook his snow-white head, looking down upon the intrusive one more in sorrow than in anger, spoke no word, but motioned the audacity back down the nave again to the place where Cobbett officiated. Back, clatter, clatter, blushing and confused, the stranger retreated, watched, as it seemed to him, by a thousand sarcastic and cynical eyes. The bells slipped from their jangling peal into a solemn single note. The Mere People were in their places at the back of the nave, the Great Ones leaving their entrance until the very last moment. There was a light in the organ-loft; very softly Brockett began his voluntary--clatter, clatter, clatter, and the School arrived, the small boys, swallowed by their Eton collars, first, filing into their places to the right of the screen, then the middle boys, a little indifferent and careless, then the Fifth and Sixth in their "stick-up" collars, haughty and indifferent indeed.
Dimly, on the other side of the screen, the School boys in their surplices could be seen settling into their places between the choir and the altar.
A rustling of skirts, and the aristocracy entered in ones and twos from the side doors that opened out of the Cloisters. For some of them--for a very few--Lawrence had his confidential smile. For Mrs. Sampson, for instance--for Mrs. Combermere, for Mrs. Ryle and Mrs. Brandon.
A very special one for Mrs. Brandon because of his high opinion of her husband. She was nothing very much--"a mean little woman," he thought her --but the Archdeacon had married her. That was enough.
Joan was with her, conscious that every one must be noticing her—the D'Arcy girls and Cynthia Ryle and Gladys Sampson, they would all be looking and criticising. Hustle, rustle, rustle--here was an event indeed! Lady St. Leath was come, and with her in attendance Johnny and Hetty. Lawrence hurried forward, disregarding Mrs. Brandon, who was compelled to undo her cord for herself. He led Lady St. Leath forward with a ceremony, a dignity, that was marvellous to see. She moved behind him as though she owned the Cathedral, or rather could have owned it had she thought it worth her while. All the little boys in the Upper Third and Lower Fourth turned their necks in their Eton collars and watched. What a bonnet she was wearing! All the colours of the rainbow, odd, indeed, perched there on the top of her untidy white hair!
Every one settled down; the voluntary was louder, the single note of the bell suddenly more urgent. Ladies looked about them. Ellen Stiles saw Miss Dobell--smile, smile. Joan saw Cynthia Ryle--smile, smile. Lawrence, with the expression of the Angel Gabriel waiting to admit into heaven a new troop of repentant sinners, stood expectant. The sun filtered in dusty ladders of coloured light and fell in squares upon the empty spaces of the nave.
The bell suddenly ceased, a long melodious and melancholy "Amen" came from somewhere far away in the purple shadow. Every one moved; a noise like a little uncertain breeze blew through the Cathedral as the congregation rose; then the choir filed through, the boys, the men, the Precentor, old Canon Morphew and older Canon Batholomew, Canon Rogers, his face bitter and discontented, Canon Foster, Bentinck-Major, last of all, Archdeacon Brandon. They had filed into their places in the choir, they were kneeling, the Precentor's voice rang out....
The familiar sound of Canon Ryle's voice recalled Mrs. Brandon to time and place. She was kneeling, her gloved hands pressed close to her face. She was looking into thick dense darkness, a darkness penetrated with the strong scent of Russia leather and the faint musty smell that always seemed to rise from the Cathedral hassocks and the woodwork upon which she leant. Until Ryle's voice roused her she had been swimming in space and eternity; behind her, like a little boat bobbing distressfully in her track, was the scene of that early morning with which that day had opened. She saw herself, as it were, the body of some quite other woman, lying in that so familiar bedroom and saying "No"--saying it again and again and again. "No. No. No."
Why had she said "No," and was it not in reality another woman who had said it, and why had he been so quiet? It was not his way. There had been no storm. She shivered a little behind her gloves.
"Dearly beloved brethren," began the Precentor, pleading, impersonal.
Slowly her brain, like a little dark fish striking up from deep green waters, rose to the surface of her consciousness. What she was then most surely aware of was that she was on the very edge of something; it was a quite physical sensation, as though she had been walking over mist-soaked downs and had suddenly hesitated, to find herself looking down along the precipitances of jagged black rock. It was "jagged black rock" over which she was now peering.
The two sides of the choir were now rivalling one another over the psalms, hurling verses at one another with breathless speed, as though they said: "Here's the ball. Catch. Oh, youareslow!"
In just that way across the field of Amy Brandon's consciousness two voices were shouting at one another.
One cried: "See what she's in for, the foolish woman! She's not up to it. It will finish her."
And the other answered: "Well, she is in for it! So it's no use warning her any longer. She wants it. She's going to have it."
And the first repeated: "It never pays! It never pays! It never pays!"
And the second replied: "No, but nothing can stop her now. Nothing!"
Could nothing stop her? Behind the intricacies of one of Smart's most elaborate "Te Deums," with clenched hands and little shivers of apprehension, she fought a poor little battle.
"We praise Thee, O God. We acknowledge Thee to be the Lord...."
"The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise Thee...." A boy's voice rose, "Thou did'st not abhor the Virgin's womb...."
Let her step back now while there was yet time. She had her children. She had Falk. Falk! She looked around her, almost expecting him to be at her side, although she well knew that he had long ago abandoned the Cathedral services. Ah, it wasn't fair! If only he loved her, if only any one loved her, any one whom she herself could love. If any one wanted her!
Lawrence was waiting, his back turned to the nave. As the last words of the "Te Deum" rose into a shout of triumphant confidence he turned and solemnly, his staff raised, advanced, Archdeacon Brandon behind him. Now, as always, a little giggle of appreciation ran down the nave as the Archdeacon marched forward to the Lectern. The tourists whispered and asked one another who that fine-looking man was. They craned their necks into the aisle. And hedidlook fine, his head up, his shoulders back, his grave dignity graciously at their service. At their service and God's.
The sight of her husband inflamed Mrs. Brandon. She stared at him as though she were seeing him for the first time, but in reality she was not seeing him as he was now, but rather as he had been that morning bending over her bed in his shirt and trousers. That movement that he had made as though he would lift her bodily out of the bed.
She closed her eyes. His fine rich voice came to her from a long way off. Let him boom as loudly as he pleased, he could not touch her any more. She had escaped, and for ever. She saw, then, Morris as she had seen him at that tea-party months ago. She recovered that strange sense that she had had (and that he had had too, as she knew) of being carried out right away from one's body into an atmosphere of fire and heat and sudden cold. They had no more been able to avoid that look that they had exchanged than they had been able to escape being born. Let it then stay at that. She wanted nothing more than that. Only that look must be exchanged again. She was hungry, starving for it. Shemustsee him often, continually. She must be able to look at him, touch the sleeve of his coat, hear his voice. She must be able to do things for him, little simple things that no one else could do. She wanted no more than that. Only to be near to him and to see that he was cared for...looked after. Surely that was not wrong. No one could say....
Little shivers ran continually about her body, and her hands, clenched tightly, were damp within her gloves.
The Precentor gave out the words of the Anthem, "Little children, love one another."
Every one rose--save Lady St. Leath, who settled herself magnificently in her seat and looked about her as though she challenged anybody to tell her that she was wrong to do so.
Yes, that was all Amy Brandon wanted. Who could say that she was wrong to want it? The little battle was concluded.
Old Canon Foster was preaching to-day. Always at the conclusion of the Anthem certain ruffians, visitors, tourists, clattered out. No sermon for them. They did not matter very greatly because they were far away at the back of the nave, and nobody need look at them; but on Foster's preaching days certain of the aristocracy also retired, and this was disconcerting because their seats were prominent ones and their dresses were of silk. Often Lady St. Leath was one of these, but to-day she was sunk into a kind of stupor and did not move. Mrs. Combermere, Ellen Stiles and Mrs. Sampson were the guilty ones.
Rustle of their dresses, the heavy flop of the side Cloister door as it closed behind them, and then silence once more and the thin angry voice of Canon Foster, "Let us pray."
Out in the grey Cloisters it was charming. The mild April sun flooded the square of grass that lay in the middle of the thick rounded pillars like a floor of bright green glass.
The ladies stood for a moment looking out into the sunny silence. The Cathedral was hushed behind them; Ellen Stiles was looking very gay and very hideous in a large hat stifled with flowers, set sideways on her head, and a bright purple silk dress pulled in tightly at the waist, rising to high puffed shoulders. Her figure was not suited to the fashion of the day.
Mrs. Sampson explained that she was suffering from one of the worst of her nervous headaches and that she could not have endured the service another moment. Miss Stiles was all eager solicitude.
"Iamso sorry. I know how you are when you get one of those things. Nothing does it any good, does it? I know you've tried everything, and it simply goes on for days and days, getting worse and worse. And the really terrible part of them is that, with you, they seem to be constitutional. No doctors can do anything--when they're constitutional. There you are for the rest of your days!"
Mrs. Sampson gave a little shiver.
"I must say, Dr. Puddifoot seems to be very little use," she moaned.
"Oh! Puddifoot!" Miss Stiles was contemptuous. "He's past his work. That's one comfort about this place. If any one's ill he dies. No false hopes. At least, we know where we are."
They walked through the Martyr's Passage out into the full sunlight of the Precincts.
"What a jolly day!" said Mrs. Combermere, "I shall take my dogs for a walk. By the way, Ellen," she turned round to her friend, "how did Miss Burnett's tea-party go? I haven't seen you since."
"Oh, it was too funny!" Miss Stiles giggled. "You never saw such a mixture, and I don't think Miss Burnett knew who any one was. Not that she had much time to think, poor dear, she was so worried with the tea. Such a maid as she had you never saw!"
"A mixture?" asked Mrs. Combermere. "Who were they?"
"Oh, Canon Ronder and Bentinck-Major and Mrs. Brandon and--Oh, yes! actually Falk Brandon!"
"Falk Brandon there?"
"Yes, wasn't it the strangest thing. I shouldn't have thought he'd have had time--However, you told me not to, so I won't--"
"Who did you talk to?"
"I talked to Miss Burnett most of the time. I tried to cheer her up. No one else paid the least attention to her."
"She's a very stupid person, it seems to me," Mrs. Sampson murmured. "But of course I know her very slightly."
"Stupid!" Miss Stiles laughed. "Why, she hasn't an idea in her head. I don't believe that she knows it's Jubilee Year. Positively!"
A little wind blew sportively around Miss Stiles' large hat. They all moved forward.
"The funny thing was--" Miss Stiles paused and looked apprehensively at Mrs. Combermere. "I know you don't like scandal, but of course this isn't scandal--there's nothing in it--"
"Come on, Ellen. Out with it," said Mrs. Combermere.
"Well, Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris. I caught the oddest look between them."
"Look! What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Combermere sharply. Mrs. Sampson stood still, her mouth a little open, forgetting her neuralgia.
"Of course it was nothing. All the same, they were standing at the window saying something, looking at one another, well, positively as though they had known one another intimately for years. I assure you--"
Mrs. Combermere turned upon her. "Of all the nasty minds in this town, Ellen, you have the nastiest. I've told you so before. People can't even look at one another now. Why, you might as well say that I'd been gazing at your Ronder when he came to tea the other day."
"Perhaps I shall," said Miss Stiles, laughing. "It would be a delightful story to spread. Seriously, why not make a match of it? You'd just suit one another."
"Once is enough for me in a life-time," said Mrs. Combermere grimly. "Now, Ellen, come along. No more mischief. Leave poor little Morris alone."
"Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris!" repeated Mrs. Sampson, her eyes wide open. "Well, I do declare."
The ladies separated, and the Precincts was abandoned for a time to its beautiful Sunday peace and calm.
May is the finest month of all the year in Glebeshire. The days are warm but not too hot; the sky is blue but not too blue, the air is soft but with a touch of sharpness The valleys are pressed down and overflowing with flowers; the cuckoo cries across the glassy waters of blue harbours, and the gorse is honey-scented among the rocks.
May-day in Polchester this year was warm and bright, with a persistent cuckoo somewhere in the Dean's garden, and a very shrill-voiced canary in Miss Dobell's open window. The citizens of Polchester were suddenly aware that summer was close upon them. Doors were flung open and the gardens sinuously watered, summer clothes were dragged from their long confinement and anxiously overlooked, Mr. Martin, the stationer, hung a row of his coloured Polchester views along a string across his window, the dark, covered ways of the market-place quivered and shone with pots of spring flowers, and old Simon's water-cart made its first trembling and shaking appearance down the High Street.
All this was well enough and customary enough, but what marked this spring from any other spring that had ever been was that it was Jubilee Year. It was on this warm May-day that Polchester people realised suddenly that the Jubilee was not far away. The event had not quite the excitement and novelty that the Jubilee of 1887 had had; there was, perhaps, in London and the larger towns, something of a sense of repetition. But Polchester was far from the general highway and, although the picture of the wonderful old lady, now nearly eighty years of age, was strong before every one's vision, there was a deep determination to make this year's celebration a great Polchester affair, to make it the celebration of Polchester men and Polchester history and Polchester progress.
The programme had been long arranged--the great Service in the Cathedral, the Ball in the Assembly Rooms, the Flower Show in the St. Leath Castle grounds, the Torchlight Procession, the Croquet Tournament, the School- children's Tea and the School Cricket-match. A fine programme, and the Jubilee Committee, with the Bishop, the Mayor, and the Countess of St. Leath for its presidents, had already held several meetings.
Nevertheless, Glebeshire has a rather languishing climate. Polchester has been called by its critics "a lazy town," and it must be confessed that everything in connection with the Jubilee had been jogging along very sleepily until of a sudden this warm May-day arrived, and every one sprang into action. The Mayor called a meeting of the town branch of the Committee, and the Bishop out at Carpledon summoned his ecclesiastics, and Joan found a note from Gladys Sampson beckoning her to the Sampson house to do her share of the glorious work. It had been decided by the Higher Powers that it would be a charming thing for some of the younger Polchester ladies to have in charge the working of two of the flags that were to decorate the Assembly Room walls on the night of the Ball. Gladys Sampson, who, unlike her mother, never suffered from headaches, and was a strong, determined, rather masculine girl, soon had the affair in hand, and the party was summoned.
I would not like to say that Polchester had a more snobbish spirit than other Cathedral towns, but there is no doubt that, thirty years ago, the lines were drawn very clearly indeed between the "Cathedral" and the "Others."
"Cathedral" included not only the daughters of the Canons and what Mr. Martin, in his little town guide-book, called "General Ecclesiastical Phenomena," but also the two daughters of Puddifoot's sister, Grace and Annie Trudon; the three daughters of Roger McKenzie, the town lawyer; little Betty Callender, the only child of old, red-faced Major Callender; Mary and Amy Forrester, daughters of old Admiral Forrester; and, of course, the St. Leath girls.
When Joan arrived, then, in the Deanery dining-room there was a fine gathering. Very unsophisticated they would all have been considered by the present generation. Lady Rose and Lady Mary, who were both of them nearer forty than thirty, had of course had some experience of London, and had been even to Paris and Rome. Of the "Others," at this time, only Betty Callender, who had been born in India, and the Forresters had been farther, in all their lives, than Drymouth. Their lives were bound, and happily bound, by the Polchester horizon. They lived in and for and by the local excitements, talks, croquet, bicycling (under proper guardianship), Rafiel or Buquay or Clinton in the summer, and the occasional (very, very occasional) performances of amateur theatricals in the Assembly Rooms.
Moreover, they were happy and contented and healthy. For many of themJane Eyrewas still a forbidden book and a railway train a remarkable adventure.
Polchester was the world and the world was Polchester. They were at least a century nearer to Jane Austen's day than they were to George the Fifth's.
Joan saw, with relief, so soon as she entered the room, that the St. Leath women were absent. They overawed her and were so much older than the others there that they brought constraint with them and embarrassment.
Any stranger, coming suddenly into the room, must have felt its light and gaiety and happiness. The high wide dining-room windows were open and looked, over sloping lawns, down to the Pol and up again to the woods beyond. The trees were faintly purple in the spring sun, daffodils were nodding on the lawn and little gossamer clouds of pale orange floated like feathers across the sky. The large dining-room table was cleared for action, and Gladys Sampson, very serious and important, stood at the far end of the room under a very bad oil-painting of her father, directing operations. The girls were dressed for the most part in white muslin frocks, high in the shoulders and pulled in at the waist and tight round the neck--only the McKenzie girls, who rode to hounds and played tennis beautifully and had, all three of them, faces of glazed red brick, were clad in the heavy Harris tweeds that were just then beginning to be so fashionable.
Joan, who only a month or two ago would have been devoured with shyness at penetrating the fastnesses of the Sampson dining-room, now felt no shyness whatever but nodded quite casually to Gladys, smiled at the McKenzies, and found a place between Cynthia Ryle and Jane D'Arcy.
They all sat, bathed in the sunshine, and looked at Gladys Sampson. She cleared her throat and said in her pounding heavy voice--her voice was created for Committees: "Now all of you know what we're here for. We're here to make two banners for the Assembly Rooms and we've got to do our very best. We haven't got a great deal of time between now and June the Twentieth, so we must work, and I propose that we come here every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, and when I sayhereI mean somebody or other's house, because of course it won't be always here. There's cutting up to do and sewing and plenty of work really for everybody, because when the banners are done there are the flags for the school-children. Now if any one has any suggestions to make I shall be very glad to hear them."
There was at first no reply to this and every one smiled and looked at the portrait of the Dean. Then one of the McKenzie girls remarked in a deep bass voice:
"That's all right, Gladys. But who's going to decide who does what? Very decent of you to ask us but we're not much in the sewing line--never have been."
"Oh," said Gladys, "I've got people's names down for the different things they're to do and any one whom it doesn't suit has only got to speak up."
Soon the material was distributed and groups were formed round the room. A chatter arose like the murmur of bees. The sun as it sank lower behind the woods turned them to dark crimson and the river pale grey. The sun fell now in burning patches and squares across the room and the dim yellow blinds were pulled half-way across the windows. With this the room was shaded into a strong coloured twilight and the white frocks shone as though seen through glass. The air grew cold beyond the open windows, but the room was warm with the heat that the walls had stolen and stored from the sun.
Joan sat with Jane D'Arcy and Betty Callender. She was very happy to be at rest there; she felt secure and safe. Because in truth during these last weeks life had been increasingly difficult--difficult not only because it had become, of late, so new and so strange, but also because she could not tell what was happening. Family life had indeed become of late a mystery, and behind the mystery there was a dim sense of apprehension, apprehension that she had never felt in all her days before. As she sank into the tranquillity of the golden afternoon glow, with the soft white silk passing to and fro in her bands, she tried to realise for herself what had been occurring. Her father was, on the whole, simple enough. He was beginning to suffer yet again from one of his awful obsessions. Since the hour of her earliest childhood she had watched these obsessions and dreaded them.
There had been so many, big ones and little ones. Now the Government, now the Dean, now the Town Council, now the Chapter, now the Choir, now some rude letter, now some impertinent article in a paper. Like wild fierce animals these things had from their dark thickets leapt out upon him, and he had proceeded to wrestle with them in the full presence of his family. Always, at last, he had been, victorious over them, the triumph had been publicly announced, "Te Deums" sung, and for a time there had been peace. It was some while since the last obsession, some ridiculous action about drainage on the part of the Town Council. But the new one threatened to make up in full for the length of that interval.
Only just before Falk's unexpected return from Oxford Joan had been congratulating herself on her father's happiness and peace of mind. She might have known the omens of that dangerous quiet. On the very day of Falk's arrival Canon Ronder had arrived too.
Canon Ronder! How Joan was beginning to detest the very sound of the name! She had hated the man himself as soon as she had set eyes upon him. She had scented, in some instinctive way, the trouble that lay behind those large round glasses and that broad indulgent smile. But now! Now they were having the name "Ronder" with their breakfast, their dinner, and their tea. Into everything apparently his fat fingers were inserted; her father saw his rounded shadow behind every door, his rosy cheeks at every window.
And yet it was very difficult to discover what exactly it was that he had done! Now, whatever it might be that went wrong in the Brandon house, in the Cathedral, in the town, her father was certain that Ronder was responsible,--but proof. Well, there wasn't any. And it was precisely this absence of proof that built up the obsession.
Everywhere that Ronder went he spoke enthusiastically about the Archdeacon. These compliments came back to Joan again and again. "If there's one man in this town I admire----" "What would this town be without----" "We're lucky, indeed, to have the Archdeacon----" And yet was there not behind all these things a laugh, a jest, a mocking tone, something that belonged in spirit to that horrible day when the elephant had trodden upon her father's hat?
She loved her father, and she loved him twice as dearly since one night when on driving up to the Castle he had held her hand. But now the obsession had killed the possibility of any tenderness between them; she longed to be able to do something that would show him how strongly she was his partisan, to insult Canon Ronder in the market-place, to turn her back when he spoke to her--and, at the same time, intermingled with this hot championship was irritation that her father should allow himself to be obsessed by this. He who was so far greater than a million Ronders!
The situation in the Brandon family had not been made any easier by Falk's strange liking for the man. Joan did not pretend that she understood her brother or had ever been in any way close to him. When she had been little he had seemed to be so infinitely above her as to be in another world, and now that they seemed almost of an age he was strange to her like some one of foreign blood. She knew that she did not count in his scheme of life at all, that he never thought of her nor wanted her. She did not mind that, and even now she would have been tranquil about him had it not been for her mother's anxiety. She could not but see how during the last weeks her mother had watched every step that Falk took, her eyes always searching his face as though he were keeping some secret from her. To Joan, who never believed that people could plot and plan and lead double lives, this all seemed unnatural and exaggerated.
But she knew well enough that her mother had never attempted to give her any of her confidence. Everything at home, in short, was difficult and confused. Nobody was happy, nobody was natural. Even her own private history, if she looked into it too closely, did not show her any very optimistic colours. She had not seen Johnny St. Leath now for a fortnight, nor heard from him, and those precious words under the Arden Gate one evening were beginning already to appear a dim unsubstantial dream. However, if there was one quality that Joan Brandon possessed in excess of all others, it was a simple fidelity to the cause or person in front of her.
Her doubts came simply from the wonder as to whether she had not concluded too much from his words and built upon them too fairy-like a castle.
With a gesture she flung all her wonders and troubles out upon the gold- swept lawn and trained all her attention to the chatter among the girls around her. She admired Jane D'Arcy very much; she was so "elegant." Everything that Jane wore became her slim straight body, and her pale pointed face was always a little languid in expression, as though daily life were an exhausting affair and not intended for superior persons. She had been told, from a very early day, that her voice was "low and musical," so she always spoke in whispers which gave her thoughts an importance that they might not otherwise have possessed. Very different was little Betty Callender, round and rosy like an apple, with freckles on her nose and bright blue eyes. She laughed a great deal and liked to agree with everything that any one said.
"If you ask me," said Jane in her fascinating whisper, "there's a lot of nonsense about this old Jubilee."
"Oh, do you think so?" said Joan.
"Yes. Old Victoria's been on the throne long enough, 'Tis time we had somebody else."
Joan was very much shocked by this and said so.
"I don't think we ought to be governed byoldpeople," said Jane. "Every one over seventy ought to be buried whether they wish it or no."
Joan laughed aloud.
"Of course they wouldn't wish it," she said.
Laughter came, now here, now there, from different parts of the room. Every one was very gay from the triple sense that they were the elect of Polchester, that they were doing important work, and that summer was coming.
Jane D'Arcy tossed her head.
"Father says that perhaps he'll be taking us to London for it," she whispered.
"I wouldn't go if any one offered me," said Joan. "It's Polchester I want to see it at, not London. Of course I'd love to see the Queen, but it would probably be only for a moment, and all the rest would be horrible crowds with nobody knowing you. While here! Oh! it will be lovely!"
Jane smiled. "Poor child. Of course you know nothing about London. How should you? Give me a week in London and you can have your old Polchester for ever. What ever happens in Polchester? Silly old croquet parties and a dance in the Assembly Rooms. Andneverany one new."
"Well, thereissome one new," said Betty Callender, "I saw her this morning."
"Her? Who?" asked Jane, with the scorn of one who has already made up her mind to despise.
"I was with mother going through the market and Lady St. Leath came by in an open carriage. She was with her. Mother says she's a Miss Daubeney from London--and oh! she's perfectly lovely! and mother says she's to marry Lord St. Leath----"
"Oh! I heard she was coming," said Jane, still scornfully. "How silly you are, Betty! You think any one lovely if she comes from London."
"No, but she was," insisted Betty, "mother said so too, and she had a blue silk parasol, and she was just sweet. Lord St. Leath was in the carriage with them."
"Poor Johnny!" said Jane. "He always has to do just what that horrible old mother of his tells him."
Joan had listened to this little dialogue with what bravery she could. Doom then had been pronounced? Sentence had fallen? Miss Daubeney had arrived. She could hear the old Countess' voice again. "Claire Daubeney- Monteagle's daughter--such, a nice girl--Johnny's friend-----"
Johnny's friend! Of course she was. Nothing could show to Joan more clearly the difference between Joan's world and the St. Leath world than the arrival of this lovely stranger. Although Mme. Sarah Grand and others were at this very moment forcing that strange figure, the New Woman, upon a reluctant world, Joan belonged most distinctly to the earlier generation. She trembled at the thought of any publicity, of any thrusting herself forward, of any, even momentary, rebellion against her position. Of course Johnny belonged to this beautiful creature; she had always known, in her heart, that her dream was an impossible one. Nevertheless the room, the sunlight, the white dresses, the long shining table, the coloured silks and ribbons, swam in confusion around her. She was suddenly miserable. Her hands shook and her upper lip trembled. She had a strange illogical desire to go out and find Miss Daubeney and snatch her blue parasol from her startled hands and stamp upon it.
"Well," said Jane, "I don't envy any one who marries Johnny--to be shut up in that house with all those old women!"
Betty shook her head very solemnly and tried to look older than her years.
The afternoon was drawing on. Gladys came across and closed the windows.
"I think that's about enough to-day," she said. "Now we'll have tea."
Joan's great desire was to slip away and go home. She put her work on the table, fetched her coat from the other end of the room.
Gladys stopped her. "Don't go, Joan. You must have tea."
"I promised mother-----" she said.
The door opened. She turned and found herself close to the Dean and Canon Ronder.
The Dean came forward, nervously rubbing his hands together as was his custom. "Well, children," he said, blinking at them. Ronder stood, smiling, in the doorway. At the sight of him Joan was filled with hatred-- vehement, indignant hatred; she had never hated any one before, unless possibly it was Miss St. Clair, the French mistress. Now, from what source she did not know, fear and passion flowed into her. Nothing could have been more amiable and genial than the figure that he presented.
As always, his clothes were beautifully neat and correct, his linen spotless white, his black boots gleaming.
He beamed upon them all, and Joan felt, behind her, the response that the whole room made to him. They liked him; she knew it. He was becoming popular.
He had towards them all precisely the right attitude; he was not amiable and childish like the Dean, nor pompous like Bentinck-Major, nor sycophantic like Ryle. He did not advance to them but became, as it were, himself one of them, understanding exactly the way that they wanted him.
And Joan hated him; she hated his red face and his neatness and his broad chest and his stout legs--everything, everything! She also feared him. She had never before, although for long now she had been conscious of his power, been so deeply aware of his connection with herself. It was as though his round shadow had, on this lovely afternoon, crept forward a little and touched with its dim grey for the first time the Brandon house.
"Canon Ronder," Gladys Sampson cried, "come and see what we've done."
He moved forward and patted little Betty Callender on the head as he passed. "Are you all right, my dear, and your father?"
It appeared that Betty was delighted. Suddenly he saw Joan.
"Oh, good evening, Miss Brandon." He altered his tone for her, speaking as though she were an equal.
Joan looked at him; colour flamed in her cheeks. She did not reply, and then feeling as though in an instant she would do something quite disgraceful, she slipped from the room.
Soon, after gently smiling at the parlourmaid, who was an old friend of hers because she had once been in service at the Brandons, she found herself standing, a little lost and bewildered, at the corner of Green Lane and Orange Street. Lost and bewildered because one emotion after another seemed suddenly to have seized upon her and taken her captive. Lost and bewildered almost as though she had been bewitched, carried off through the shining skies by her captor and then dropped, deserted, left, in some unknown country.
Green Lane in the evening light had a fairy air. The stumpy trees on either side with the bright new green of the spring seemed to be concealing lamps within their branches. So thick a glow suffused the air that it was as though strangely coloured fruit, purple and orange and amethyst, hung glittering against the pale yellow sky, and the road running up the hill was like pale wax.
On the other side Orange Street tumbled pell-mell into the roofs of the town. The monument of the fierce Georgian citizen near which Joan was standing guarded with a benevolent devotion the little city whose lights, stealing now upon the air, sprinkled the evening sky with a jewelled haze. No sound broke the peace; no one came nor went; only the trees of the Lane moved and stirred very faintly as though assuring the girl of their friendly company.
Never before had she so passionately loved her town. It seemed to-night when she was disturbed by her new love, her new fear, her new worldly knowledge, to be eager to assure her that it was with her in all her troubles, that it understood that she must pass into new experiences, that it knew, none better indeed, how strange and terrifying that first realisation of real life could be, that it had itself suffered when new streets had been thrust upon it and old loved houses pulled down and the river choked and the hills despoiled, but that everything passes and love remains and homeliness and friends.
Joan felt more her own response to the town than the town's reassurance to her, but she was a little comforted and she felt a little safer.
She argued as she walked home through the Market Place and up the High Street and under the Arden Gate into the quiet sheltered Precincts, why should she think that Ronder mattered? After all might not he be the good fat clergyman that he appeared? It was more perhaps a kind of jealousy because of her father that she felt. She put aside her own little troubles in a sudden rush of tenderness for her family. She wanted to protect them all and make them happy. But how could she make them happy if they would tell her nothing? They still treated her as a child but she was a woman now. Her love for Johnny. She had admitted that to herself. She stopped on the path outside the decorous strait-laced houses and put her cool gloved hand up to her burning cheek.
She had known for a long time that she loved him, but she had not told herself. She must conquer that, stamp upon it. It was foolish, hopeless.... She ran up the steps of their house as though something pursued her.
She let herself in and found the hall dusky and obscure. The lamp had not yet been lit. She heard a voice:
"Who's that?"
She looked up and saw her mother, a little, slender figure, standing at the turn of the stairs holding in her hand a lighted candle.
"It's I, mother, Joan. I've just come from Gladys Sampson's."
"Oh! I thought it would be Falk. You didn't pass Falk on your way?"
"No, mother dear."
She went across to the little cupboard where the coats were hung. As she poked her head into the little, dark, musty place, she could feel that her mother was still standing there, listening.