I find it difficult now to realise how apart from the life of the world Polchester was in those days. Even now, when the War has shaken up and jostled together every small village in Great Britain, Polchester still has some shreds of its isolation left to it; but then--why, it might have been a walled-in fortress of mediaeval times, for all its connection with the outside world!
This isolation was quite deliberately maintained. I don't mean, of course, that Mrs. Combermere and Brandon and old Bentinck-Major and Mrs. Sampson said to themselves in so many words, "We will keep this to ourselves and defend its walls against every new invader, every new idea, new custom, new impulse. We will all be butchered rather than allow one old form, tradition, superstition to go!" It was not as conscious as that, but in effect it was that that it came to. And they were wonderfully assisted by circumstances. It is true that the main line ran through Polchester from Drymouth, but its travellers were hurrying south, and only a few trippers, a few Americans, a few sentimentalists stayed to see the Cathedral; and those who stayed found "The Bull" an impossibly inconvenient and uncomfortable hostelry and did not come again. It is true that even then, in 1897, there were many agitations by sharp business men like Crosbie and John Allen, Croppet and Fred Barnstaple, to make the place more widely known, more commercially attractive. It was not until later that the golf course was laid out and the St. Leath Hotel rose on Pol Hill. But other things were tried--steamers on the Pol, char-à-bancs to various places of local interest, and so on--but, at this time, all these efforts failed. The Cathedral was too strong for them, above all Brandon and Mrs. Combermere were too strong for them. Nothing was done to encourage strangers; I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Combermere didn't pay old Jolliffe of "The Bull" so much a year to keep his hotel inconvenient and insanitary. The men on the Town Council were for the most part like the Canons, aged and conservative. It is true that it was in 1897 that Barnstaple was elected Mayor, but without Ronder I doubt whether even he would have been able to do very much. The town then revolved, so to speak, entirely on its own axis; it revolved between the two great events of the year, the summer Polchester Fair, the winter County Ball, and those two great affairs were conducted, in every detail and particular, as they had been conducted a hundred years before. I find it strange, writing from the angle of to-day, to conceive it possible that so short a time ago anything in England could have been so conservative. I myself was only thirteen years of age when Ronder came to our town, and saw all grown figures with the exaggerated colour and romance that local inquisitive age bestows. About my own contemporaries, young Jeremy Cole for instance, there was no colour at all, but the older figures were strange--gigantic, almost mythological. Mrs. Combermere, the Dean, the Archdeacon, Mrs. Sampson, Canon Ronder, moved about the town, to my young eyes, like gods and goddesses, and it was not until after my return to Polchester at the end of my first Cambridge year that I saw clearly how small a town it was and how tiny the figures in it.
Joan Brandon thought her father a marvellous man, as I have already said, but she had seen him too often lose his temper, too often snub her mother, too often be upset by trivial and unimportant details, to conceive him romantically. Falk, her brother, was romantic to her because she had seen so much less of him; her father she knew too well. For some time after Falk's return from Oxford nothing happened. Joan did not know what exactly she had expected to happen, but she had an uneasy sense that more was going on behind the scenes than she knew.
The Archdeacon did not speak to Falk unless he were compelled, but Falk did not seem to mind this in the least. His handsome defiant face flashed scorn at the whole family.
He was out of the house most of the day, came down to breakfast when every one else had finished, and often was not present at dinner in the evening. The Archdeacon had said that breakfast was not to be kept for him, but nevertheless breakfast was there, on the table, however late he was. The cook and, indeed, all the servants adored him because, I suppose, he had no sense of class-difference at all and laughed and joked with any one if he was in a good temper. All these first days he spoke scarcely one word to Joan; it was as though the whole family were in his black books for some disgraceful act--they were the guilty ones and not he.
Joan blamed herself for feeling so light-hearted and gay during this family crisis, but she could not help it. A very short time ago the knowledge that battle was engaged in the very heart of the house would have made her miserable and apprehensive, but now it seemed to be all outside her and unconnected with her as though she had a life of her own that no one could touch. Her courage seemed to grow with every half-hour of her life. Some months passed, and then one morning she came into the drawing-room and found her mother rather bewildered and distressed.
"Oh dear, I really don't know what to do!" said her mother.
It was so seldom that Joan was appealed to for advice that her heart now beat with pride.
"What's the matter, mother?" she asked, trying to look dignified and unconcerned.
Mrs. Brandon looked at her with a frightened and startled look as though she had been speaking to herself and had not wished to be overheard.
"Oh, Joan!...I didn't know that you were there!"
"What's the matter? Is it anything I can help about?"
"'No, dear, nothing...really I didn't know that you were there."
"No, but you must let me help, mother." Joan marvelled at her own boldness as she spoke.
"It's nothing you can do, dear."
"But it's sure to be something I can do. Do you know that I've been home for months and months simply with the idea of helping you, and I'm never allowed to do anything?"
"Really, Joan--I don't think that's quite the way to speak."
"No, but, mother, it's true. Iwantto help. I'm grown up. I'm going to dinner at the Castle, and Imusthelp you, or--or--I shall go away and earn my own living!"
This last was so startling and fantastic that both Joan and her mother stared at one another in a kind of horrified amazement.
"No, I didn't mean that, of course," Joan said, hurriedly recovering herself. "But you must see that I must have some work to do."
"I don't know what your father would say," said Mrs. Brandon, still bewildered.
"Oh, never mind father," said Joan quickly; "this is a matter just between you and me. I'm here to help you, and you must let me do something. Now, what's the trouble to-day?"
"I don't know, dear. There's no trouble exactly. Things are so difficult just now. The fact is that I promised to go to tea with Miss Burnett this afternoon and now your father wants me to go with him to the Deanery. So provoking! Miss Burnett caught me in the street, where it's always so difficult to think of excuses."
"Let me go to Miss Burnett's instead," said Joan. "It's quite time I took on some of the calling for you. I've never seen Mr. Morris, and I hear he's very nice."
"Very well, dear," said Mrs. Brandon, suddenly beginning, as her way was when there was any real opposition, to capitulate on all sides at once. "Suppose you do go, dear. I'm sure it's very kind of you. And you might take those books back to the Circulating Library as well. It's Market-Day. Are you sure you won't mind the horses and cows and dogs?"
Joan laughed. "I believe you think I'm still five years old, mother. That's splendid. I'll start off after lunch."
Joan went up to her room, elated. Truly, this was a great step forward. It occurred to her on further reflection that something very serious indeed must be going on behind the scenes to cause her mother to give in so quickly. She sat on her old faded rocking-chair, her hands crossed behind her head, thinking it all out. Did she once begin calling on her own account she was grown-up indeed. What would these Morrises be like?
She found now that she was beginning to be a little frightened. Mr. Morris was the new Rector of St. James', the little church over by the cattle market. He had not been in Polchester very long and was said to be a shy timid man, but a good preacher. He was a widower, and his sister-in-law kept house for him. Joan considered further on the great importance of these concessions; it made all the difference to everything. She was now to have a life of her own, and every kind of adventure and romance was possible for her. She was suddenly so happy that she sprang up and did a little dance round her room, a sort of polka, that became so vehement that the pictures and the little rickety table rattled.
"I'll be so grown-up at the Morrises' this afternoon that they'll think I've been calling for years," she said to herself.
She had need of all her courage and optimism at luncheon, for it was a gloomy meal. Only her father and mother were present. They were all very silent.
After lunch she went upstairs, put on her hat and coat, picked up the three Library books, and started off. It was a sunny day, with shadows chasing one another across the Cathedral green. There was, as there so often is in Polchester, a smell of the sea in the air, cold and invigorating. She paused for a moment and looked across at the Cathedral. She did not know why, but she had been always afraid of the Cathedral. She had never loved it, and had always wished that they could go on Sundays to some little church like St. James'.
For most of her conscious life the Cathedral had hung over her with its dark menacing shadow, forbidding her, as it seemed to her, to be gay or happy or careless. To-day the thought suddenly came to her, "That place is going to do us harm. I hate it," and for a moment she was depressed and uneasy; but when she came out from the Arden Gate and saw the High Street all shining with the sun, running down the hill into glittering distance, she was gloriously cheerful once more. There the second wonderful thing that day happened to her. She had taken scarcely a step down the hill when she came upon Mrs. Sampson. There was nothing wonderful about that; Mrs. Sampson, being the wife of a Dean who was much more retiring than he should be, was to be seen in public at all times and seasons, having to do, as it were, the work of two rather than one. No, the wonderful thing was that Joan suddenly realised that her terror of Mrs. Sampson--a terror that had always been a real thorn in her flesh--was completely gone. It was as though a charm, an Abracadabra, had been whispered over Mrs. Sampson and she had been changed immediately into a rabbit. It had never been Mrs. Sampson's fault that she was alarming to the young. She was a good woman, but she was cursed with two sad burdens--a desperate shyness and a series, unrelenting, unmitigating, mysterious, desperate, of nervous headaches.
Her headaches were a feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies. But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs. Sampson's sharpness of manner, her terrifying habit of rapping out a "Yes" or a "No," her gloomy view of boisterous habits and healthy appetites, made her one most truly to be avoided. Before to-day Joan would have willingly walked a mile out of her way to escape her; to-day she only saw a nervous, pale-faced little woman in an ill-fitting blue dress, for whom she could not be anything but sorry.
"Good morning, Mrs. Sampson."
"Good morning, Joan."
"Isn't it a nice day?"
"It's cold, I think. Is your mother well?"
"Very well, thank you."
"Give her my love."
"I will, Mrs. Sampson."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
Mrs. Sampson's nose, that would take on a blue colour on a cold day, quivered, her thin mouth shut with a snap, and she was gone.
"But I wasn't afraid of her!" She was almost frightened at this new spirit that had come to her, and, feeling rather that in another moment she would be punished for her piratical audacity, she turned up the steps into the Circulating Library.
It was the custom in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs. Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings. She hated children, myself in particular. She was also a Snob of the Snobs, and thanked God on her knees every night for Lady St. Leath, Mrs. Combermere and Mrs. Sampson, by whose graces she was left in her present position.
Joan was still too near childhood to be considered very seriously, and it was well known that her father did not take her very seriously either. She was always, therefore, on the rare occasions when she entered the Library, snubbed by Miss Milton. It must be confessed that to-day, in spite of her success with Mrs. Sampson, she was nervous. She was nervous partly because she hated Miss Milton's red-rimmed eyes, and never looked at them if she could help it, but, in the main, because she knew that her mother was returning the Library books too quickly, and had, moreover, insisted that she should ask for Mr. Barrie'sSentimental Tommyand Mr. Seton Merriman'sThe Sowers, both of them books that had been asked for for weeks and as steadily and persistently refused.
Joan knew what Miss Milton would say, "That they might be in next week, but that she couldn't be sure." Was Joan strong enough now, in her new- found glory, to fight for them? She did not know.
She advanced to the table smiling. Miss Milton did not look up, but continued to knit one of her horrible stockings.
"Good-morning, Miss Milton. Mother has sent back these books. They were not quite what she wanted."
"I'm sorry for that." Miss Milton took the books into her chilblained protection. "It's a little difficult, I must say, to know what Mrs. Brandon prefers."
"Well, there'sSentimental Tommy," began Joan.
But Miss Milton was an old general.
"Oh, that's out, I'm afraid. Now, here's a sweetly pretty book--Roger Varibrugh's Wife, by Adeline Sergeant. It'a only just out...."
"Or there'sThe Sowers,"said Joan, caught against her will by the red-rimmed eyes and staring at them.
"Oh, that's out, I'm afraid. There are several books here--"
"You promised mother," said Joan, "that she should haveSentimental Tommythis week. You promised her a month ago. It's about time that mother had a book that she cares for."
"Really," said Miss Milton, wide-eyed at Joan's audacity. "You seem to be charging me with some remissness, Miss Brandon. If you have any complaint, I'm sure the Library Committee will attend to it. It's to them I have to answer. When the book is in you shall have it. I can promise no more. I am only human."
"You have said that now for three months," said Joan, beginning, to her own surprised delight, to be angry. "Surely the last reader hasn't been three months over it. I thought subscribers were only allowed to keep a book a week."
Miss Milton's crimson colouring turned to a deep purple.
"The book is out," she said. "Both books are out. They are in great demand. I have no more to say."
The Library door opened, and a young man came in. Joan was still too young to wish for scenes in public. She must give up the battle for to-day. When, however, she saw who it was she blushed. It was young Lord St. Leath --Johnny St. Leath, as he was known to his familiars, who were many and of all sorts and conditions. Joan hated herself for blushing, especially before the odious Miss Milton, but there was a reason. One day in last October after morning service Joan and her mother had waited in the Cloisters to avoid a shower of rain. St. Leath had also waited and very pleasantly had talked to them both. There was nothing very alarming in this, but as the rain cleared and Mrs. Brandon had moved forward across the Green, he had suddenly, with a confusion that had seemed to her charming, asked Joan whether one day they mightn't meet again. He had given her one look straight in the eyes, tried to say something more, failed, and turned away down the Cloisters.
Joan had never before been asked by any young man to meet him again. She had told herself that this was nothing but the merest, most obvious politeness; nevertheless the look that he had given her remained.
Now, as she saw him advancing towards her, there was the thought, was it not on that very morning that her new courage and self-confidence had come to her? The thought was so absurd that she flung it at Miss Milton. But the blush remained.
Johnny was an ungainly young man, with a red face, freckles, a large mouth, and a bull-terrier--a conventional British type, I suppose, saved, nevertheless, from conventionality by his affection for his three plain sisters, his determination to see things as they were, and his sense of humour, the last of these something quite his own, and always appearing in unexpected places. The bull-terrier, in spite of the notice on the Library door that no dogs were admitted, advanced breathlessly and dribbling with excitement for Miss Milton's large black felt slippers.
"Here, Andrew, old man. Heel! Heel!" said Johnny. Andrew, however, quite naturally concluded that this was only an approval of his intentions, and there might have followed an awkward scene had his master not caught him by the collar and held him suspended in mid-air, to his own indignant surprise and astonishment.
Joan laughed, and Miss Milton, quivering between indignation, fear and snobbery, dropped the stocking that she was knitting.
Andrew burst from his master's clutches, rushed the stocking into the farthest recesses of the Library, and proceeded there to enjoy it.
Johnny apologised.
"Oh, it's quite all right, Lord St. Leath," said Miss Milton. "What a fine animal!"
"Yes, he is," said Johnny, rescuing the stocking. "He's as strong as Lucifer. Here, Andrew, you devil, I'll break every bone in your body."
During this little scene Johnny had smiled at Joan, and in so pleasant a way that she was compelled to smile back at him.
"How do you do, Miss Brandon?" He had recalled Andrew now, and the dog was slobbering happily at his feet. "Jolly day, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Joan, and stood there awkwardly, feeling that she ought to go but not knowing quite how to do so. He also seemed embarrassed, and turned abruptly to Miss Milton.
"I say, look here.... Mother asked me to come in and get that book you promised her. What's the name of the thing?...I've got it written down."
He fumbled in his pocket and produced a bit of paper.
"Here it is.Sentimental Tommy, by a man called Barrie. Silly name, but mother's always reading the most awful stuff."
Joan turned towards Miss Milton.
"How funny!" she said. "That's the book I've just been asking for. It's out."
Miss Milton's face was a curious purple.
"Well, that's odd," said Johnny. "Mother told me that you'd sent her a line to say it was in whenever she sent for it."
"It's been out three months," said Joan, staring now straight into Miss Milton's angry eyes.
"I've been keeping..." said Miss Milton. "That is, there's a special copy.... Lady St. Leath specially asked----"
"Is it in, or isn't it?" asked Johnny.
"Thereisa copy, Lord St. Leath----" With confused fingers Miss Milton searched in a drawer. She produced the book.
"You told me," said Joan, forgetting now in her anger St. Leath and all the world, "that there wouldn't he a copy for weeks. If you'd told me you were keeping one for St. Leath, that would have been different. You shouldn't have told me a lie."
"Do you mean to say," said Johnny, opening his eyes very widely indeed, "that you refused this copy to Miss Brandon?"
"Certainly," said Miss Milton, breathing very hard as though she had been running a long distance. "I was keeping it for your mother."
"Well, I'm damned," said Johnny. "I beg your pardon, Miss Brandon,...but I never heard such a thing. Does my mother pay a larger subscription than other people?"
"Certainly not."
"Then what right had you to tell Miss Brandon a lie?"
Miss Milton, in spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears--also murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets. She saw...but never mind her visions. They were terrible ones. She had recourse to her only defence.
"If I have misunderstood my duty," she said in a trembling voice, "there is the Library Committee."
"Oh, never mind," said Joan whose anger had disappeared. "It doesn't matter a bit. We'll have the book after Lady St. Leath."
"Indeed you won't," said Johnny, seizing the volume and forcing it upon Joan. "Mother can wait. I never heard of such a thing." He turned fiercely upon Miss Milton. "My mother shall know exactly what has happened. I'm sure she'd be horrified if she understood that you were keeping books from other subscribers in order that she might have them.... Good afternoon."
He strode from the room. At the door he paused.
"Can I--Shall we--Are you going down the High Street, Miss Brandon?"
"Yes," said Joan. They went out of the room and down the Library steps together.
In the shiny, sunny street they paused. The dark cobwebs of the Library hung behind Joan's consciousness like the sudden breaking of a mischievous spell.
She was so happy that she could have embraced Andrew, who was, however, already occupied with the distant aura of a white poodle on the other side of the street.
Johnny was driven by the impulse of his indignation down the hill. Joan, rather breathlessly, followed him.
"I say!" said Johnny. "Did you ever hear of such a woman! She ought to be poisoned. She ought indeed. No, poisoning's too good for her. Hung, drawn and quartered. That's what she ought to be. She'll get into trouble over that."
"Oh no," said Joan. "Please, Lord St. Leath, don't say any more about it. She has a difficult time, I expect, everybody wanting the same books. After all a promise is a promise."
"But she'd promised your mother----"
"No, she never really did. She always said that it would be in in a day or two. She never properly promised. I expect we'd have had it next."
"The snob, the rotten snob!" Johnny paused and raised his stick. "I hate women like that. No, she's not doing her job properly. She oughtn't to be there."
So swift had been their descent that they arrived in a moment at the market.
Because to-day was market-day there was a fine noise, confusion and splendour--carts rattling in and out, sheep and cows driven hither and thither, the wooden stalls bright with flowers and vegetables, the dim arcades looming behind the square filled with mysterious riches. They could not talk very much here, and Joan was glad. She was too deeply excited to talk. At one moment St. Leath took her arm to guide her past a confused mob of bewildered sheep. The Glebeshire peasant on marketing-day has plenty of conversation. Old wrinkled women, stout red-faced farmers, boys and girls all shouted together, and above the scene the light driving clouds flung their transparent shadows, like weaving shuttles across the sun.
"Oh, do let's stop here a moment," said Joan, peering into one of the arcades. "I've always loved this one all my life. I've never been able to resist it."
This was the Toy Arcade, now, I'm afraid, gone the way of so many other romantic things. It had been to all of us the most wonderful spot in Polchester from the very earliest days, this partly because of the toys themselves, partly because it was the densest and darkest of all the Arcades, never utterly to be pierced by our youthful eyes, partly because only two doors away were the sinister rooms of Mr. Dawson, the dentist. Here not only was there every kind of toy--dolls, soldiers, horses, carts, games, tops, hoops, dogs, elephants--but also sweets--chocolates, jujubes, caramels, and the best sweet in the whole world, the Polchester Bull's- eye.
They went in together. Mrs. Magnet, now with God, an old woman like a berry, always in a bonnet with green flowers, smiled and bobbed. The colours of the toys jumbled against the dark walls were like patterns in a carpet.
"What do you say, Miss Brandon?" said Johnny. "If I give you a toy will you give me one?"
"Yes," said Joan, afraid a little of Mrs. Magnet's piercing black eye.
"You're not to see what I get. Turn your back a moment."
Joan turned around. As she waited she could hear the "Hie!...Hie! Woah!" of the market-cries, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing of a cow.
"Here you are, then." She turned. He presented her with a Japanese doll, gay in a pink cotton frock, his waist girdled with a sash of gold tissue.
"Now you turn your back," she said.
In a kind of happy desperation she seized a nigger with bold red checks, a white jacket and crimson trousers.
Mrs. Magnet wrapped the presents up. They paid, and walked out into the sun again.
"I'll keep that doll," said Johnny, "just as long as you keep yours."
"Good-bye," said Joan hurriedly. "I've got to call at a house on the other side of the market.... Good-bye."
She felt the pressure of his hand on hers, then, clutching her parcel, hurried, almost ran, indeed, through the market-stalls. She did not look back.
When she had crossed the Square she turned down into a little side street. The plan of Polchester is very simple. It is built, as it were, on the side of a rock, running finally to a flat top, on which is the Cathedral. Down the side of the rock there are broad ledges, and it is on one of these that the market-place is built. At the bottom of the rock lies the jumble of cottages known most erroneously as Seatown, and round the rock runs the river Pol, slipping away at last through woods and hills and valleys into the sea. At high tide you can go all the way by river to the sea, and in the summer, this makes a pleasant and beautiful excursion. It is because of this that Seatown has, perhaps, some right to its name, because in one way and another sailors collect in the cottages and at the "Dog and Pilchard," that pleasant and democratic hostelry of which, in 1897, Samuel Hogg was landlord. Many visitors have been known to declare that Seatown was "too sweet for anything," and that "it would be really wicked to knock down the ducks of cottages," but "the ducks of cottages" were the foulest and most insanitary dwelling-places in the south of England, and it has always been to me amazing that the Polchester Town Council allowed them to stand so long as they did. In 1902, as all the Glebeshire world knows, there was the great battle of Seatown, ending in the cottages' destruction. In 1897 those evil dwelling-places gloried in their full magnificence of sweet corruption, nor did the periodical attacks of typhoid alarm in the least the citizens of the Upper Town. Once and again gentlemen from other parts paid mysterious official visits, but we had ways, in old times, of dealing with inquisitive meddlers from the outside world.
Because the market-place was half-way down the Rock, and because the Rectory of St. James' was just below the market-place, the upper windows of that house commanded a wonderful view both of the hill, High Street and Cathedral above it, and of Seatown, river and woods below it. It was said that it was up this very rocky street from the river, through the market, and up the High Street that the armed enemies of the Black Bishop had fought their way to the Cathedral on that great day when the Bishop had gone to meet his God, and a piece of rock is still shown to innocent visitors as the place whence some of his enemies, in full armour, were flung down, many thousand feet, to the waters of the Pol.
Joan had often longed to see the view from the windows of St. James' Rectory, but she had not known old Dr. Burroughs, the former Rector, a cross man with gout and rheumatism. She walked up some steps and found the house the last of three all squeezed together on the edge of the hill. The Rectory, because it was the last, stood square to all the winds of heaven, and Joan fancied what it must be in wild wintry weather. Soon she was in the drawing-room shaking hands with Miss Burnett, who was Mr. Morris' sister-in-law, and kept house for him.
Miss Burnett was a stout negative woman, whose whole mind was absorbed in the business of housekeeping, prices of food, wickedness and ingratitude of servants, maliciousness of shopkeepers and so on. The house, with all her managing, was neither tidy nor clean, as Joan quickly saw; Miss Burnett was not, by temperament, methodical, nor had she ever received any education. Her mind, so far as a perception of the outside world and its history went, was some way behind that of a Hottentot or a South Sea Islander. She had, from the day of her birth, been told by every one around her that she was stupid, and, after a faint struggle, she had acquiesced in that judgment. She knew that her younger sister, afterwards Mrs. Morris, was pretty and accomplished, and that she would never be either of those things. She was not angry nor jealous at this. The note of her character was acquiescence, and when Agatha had died of pleurisy it had seemed the natural thing for her to come and keep house for the distressed widower. If Mr. Morris had since regretted the arrangement he had, at any rate, never said so.
Miss Burnett's method of conversation was to say something about the weather and then to lapse into a surprised and distressed stare. If her visitor made some statement she crowned it with, "Well, now, that was just was I was going to say."
Her nose, when she talked, twinkled at the nostrils apprehensively, and many of her visitors found this fascinating, so that they suddenly, with hot confusion, realised that they too had been staring in a most offensive manner. Joan had not been out in the world long enough to enable her to save a difficult situation by brilliant talk, and she very quickly found herself staring at Miss Burnett's nose and longing to say something about it, as, for instance, "What a stronge nose you've got, Miss Burnett--see how it twitches!" or, "If you'll allow me, Miss Burnett, I'd just like to study your nose for a minute." When she realised this horrible desire in herself she blushed crimson and gazed about the untidy and entangled drawing-room in real desperation. She could see nothing in the room that was likely to save her. She was about to rise and depart, although she had only been there five minutes, when Mr. Morris came in.
Joan realised at once that this man was quite different from any one whom she had ever known. He was a stranger to her Polchester world in body, soul and spirit, as though, a foreigner from some far-distant country, he had been shipwrecked and cast upon an inhospitable shore. So strangely did she feel this that she was quite surprised when he did not speak with a foreign accent. "Oh, he must be a poet!" was her second thought about Mr. Morris, not because he dressed oddly or had long hair. She could not tell whence the impression came, unless it were in his strange, bewildered, lost blue eyes. Lost, bewildered--yes, that was what he was! With every movement of his slim, straight body, the impulse with which he brushed back his untidy fair hair from his forehead, he seemed like a man only just awake, a man needing care and protection, because he simply would not be able to look after himself. So ridiculously did she have this impression that she almost cried "Look out!" when he moved forward, as though he would certainly knock himself against a chair or a table.
"How strange," she thought, "that this man should live with Miss Burnett! What does he think of her?" She was excited by her discovery of him, but that meant very little, because just now she was being excited by everything. She found at once that talking to him was the easiest thing in the world. Mr. Morris did not say very much; he smiled gently, and when Miss Burnett, awaking suddenly from her torpor, said, "You'll have some tea, Miss Brandon, won't you?" he, smiling, softly repeated the invitation.
"Thank you," said Joan. "I will. How strange it is," she went on, "that you are so close to the market and, even on market-day, you don't hear a sound!"
And it was strange! as though the house were bewitched and had suddenly, even as Joan entered it, gathered around it a dark wood for its protection.
"Yes," said Mr. Morris. "We found it strange at first. But it's because we are the last house, and the three others protect us. We get the wind and rain, though. You should hear this place in a storm. But the house is strong enough; it's very stoutly built; not a board creaks in the wildest weather. Only the windows rattle and the wind comes roaring down the chimneys."
"How long have you been here?" asked Joan.
"Nearly a year--and we still feel strangers. We were near Ashford in Kent for twelve years, and the Glebeshire people are very different."
"Well," said Joan, who was a little irritated because she felt that his voice was a little sadder than it ought to be, "I think you'll like Polchester. I'msureyou will. And you've come in a good year, too. There's sure to be a lot going on this year because of the Jubilee."
Mr. Morris did not seem to be as thrilled as he should be by the thought of the Jubilee, so Joan went on:
"It's so lucky for us that it comes just at the Polchester Feast time. We always have a tremendous week at the Feast--the Horticultural Show and a Ball in the Assembly Rooms, and all sorts of things. It's going to be my first ball this year, although I've really come out already." She laughed. "Festivities start to-morrow with the arrival of Marquis."
"Marquis?" repeated Mr. Morris politely.
"Oh, don't you know Marquis? His is the greatest Circus in England. He comes to Polchester every year, and they have a procession through the town--elephants and camels, and Britannia in her chariot, and sometimes a cage with the lions and the tigers. Last year they had the sweetest little ponies--four of them, no higher than St. Bernards--and there are the clowns too, and a band."
She was suddenly afraid that she was talking too much--silly too, in her childish enthusiasms. She remembered that she was in reality deputising for her mother, who would never have talked about the Circus. Fortunately at that moment the tea came in; it was brought by a flushed and contemptuous maid, who put the tray down on a little table with a bang, tossed her head as though she despised them all, and slammed the door behind her.
Miss Burnett was upset by this, and her nose twitched more violently than ever. Joan saw that her hand trembled as she poured out the tea, and she was at once sorry for her.
Mr. Morris talked about Kent and London, and tea was drunk and the saffron cake praised, and Joan thought it was time to go. At the last, however, she turned to Mr. Morris and said:
"Do you like the Cathedral?"
"It's wonderful," he answered. "You should see it from our window upstairs."
"Oh, I hate it--" said Joan.
"Why?" Morris asked her.
There was a curious challenge in his voice. They were both standing facing one another.
"I suppose that's a silly thing to say. Only you don't live as close to it as we do, and you haven't lived here so long as we have. It seems to hang right over you, and it never changes, and I hate to think it will go on just the same, years after we're dead."
"Have you seen the view from our window?" Morris asked her.
"No," said Joan, "I was never in this house before."
"Come and see it," he said.
"I'm sure," said Miss Burnett heavily, "Miss Brandon doesn't want to be bothered--when she's seen the Cathedral all her life, too."
"Of course I'd love to see it," said Joan, laughing. "To tell you the truth, that's what I've always wanted. I looked at this house again and again when old Canon Burroughs was here, and thought there must be a wonderful view."
She said good-bye to Miss Burnett.
"My mother does hope you will soon come and see us," she said.
"I have just met Mrs. Brandon for a moment at Mrs. Combermere's," said Mr. Morris. "We'll be very glad to come."
She went out with him.
"It's up these stairs," he said. "Two flights. I hope you don't mind."
They climbed on to the second landing. At the end of the passage there was a window. The evening was grey and only little faint wisps of blue still lingered above the dusk, but the white sky threw up the Cathedral towers, now black and sharp-edged in magnificent relief. Truly itwasa view!
The window was in such a position that through it you gazed behind the neighbouring houses, above some low roofs, straight up the twisting High Street to the Cathedral. The great building seemed to be perched on the very edge of the rock, almost, you felt, swinging in mid-air, and that so precariously that with one push of the finger you might send it staggering into space. Joan had never seen it so dominating, so commanding, so fierce in its disregard of the tiny clustered world beneath it, so near to the stars, so majestic and alone.
"Yes--it's wonderful," she said.
"Oh, but you should see it," he cried, "as it can be. It's dull to-day, the sky's grey and there's no sunset,--but when it's flaming red with all the windows shining, or when all the stars are out or in moonlight... it's like a great ship sometimes, and sometimes like a cloud, and sometimes like a fiery palace. Sometimes it's in mist and you can only see just the top of the towers...."
"I don't like it," said Joan, turning away. "It doesn't care what happens to us."
"Why should it?" he answered. "Think of all it's seen--the battles and the fights and the plunder--and it doesn't care! We can do what we like and it will remain just the same."
"People could come and knock it down," Joan said.
"I believe it would still be there if they did. The rock would be there and the spirit of the Cathedral.... What do people matter beside a thing like that? Why, we're ants...!"
He stopped suddenly.
"You'll think me foolish, Miss Brandon," he said. "You have known the Cathedral so long----" He paused. "I think I know what you mean about fearing it----"
He saw her to the door.
"Good-bye," he said, smiling. "Come again."
"I like him," she thought as she walked away. What a splendid day she had had!
Archdeacon Brandon had surmounted with surprising celerity the shock of Falk's unexpected return. He was helped to this firstly by his confident belief in a God who had him especially in His eye and would, on no account, do him any harm. As God had decided that Falk had better leave Oxford, it was foolish to argue that it would have been wiser for him to stay there. Secondly, he was helped by his own love for, and pride in, his son. The independence and scorn that were so large a part of Falk's nature were after his own heart. He might fight and oppose them (he often did), but always behind the contest there was appreciation and approbation. That was the way for a son of his to treat the world--to snap his fingers at it! The natural thing to do, the good old world being as stupid as it was. Thirdly, he was helped by his family pride. It took him only a night's reflection to arrive at the decision that Falk had been entirely right in this affair and Oxford entirely in the wrong. Two days after Falk's return he wrote (without saying anything to the boy) Falk's tutor a very warm letter, pointing out that he was sure the tutor would agree with him that a little more tact and diplomacy might have prevented so unfortunate an issue. It was not for him, Brandon, to suggest that the authorities in Oxford were perhaps a little behind the times, a little out of the world. Nevertheless it was probably true that long residence in Oxford had hindered the aforesaid authorities from realising the trend of the day, from appreciating the new spirit of independence that was growing up in our younger generation. It seemed obvious to him, Archdeacon Brandon, that you could no longer treat men of Falk's age and character as mere boys and, although he was quite sure that the authorities at Oxford had done their best, he nevertheless hoped that this unfortunate episode would enable them to see that we were not now living in the Middle Ages, but rather in the last years of the nineteenth century. It may seem to some a little ironical that the Archdeacon, who was the most conservative soul alive, should write thus to one of the most conservative of our institutions, but--"Before Oxford the Brandons were...."
What the tutor remarked when he read this letter is not recorded. Brandon said nothing to Falk about all this. Indeed, during the first weeks after Falk's return he preserved a stern and dignified silence. After all, the boy must learn that authority was authority, and he prided himself that he knew, better than any number of Oxford Dons, how to train and educate the young. Nevertheless light broke through. Some of Falk's jokes were so good that his father, who had a real sense of fun if only a slight sense of humour, was bound to laugh. Very soon father and son resumed their old relations of sudden tempers and mutual admiration, and a strange, rather pathetic, quite uneloquent love that was none the less real because it was, on either side, completely selfish.
But there was a fourth reason why Falk's return caused so slight a storm. That reason was that the Archdeacon was now girding up his loins before he entered upon one of his famous campaigns. There had been many campaigns in the past. Campaigns were indeed as truly the breath of the Archdeacon's nostrils as they had been once of the great Napoleon's--and in every one of them had the Archdeacon been victorious.
This one was to be the greatest of them all, and was to set the sign and seal upon the whole of his career.
It happened that, three miles out of Polchester, there was a little village known as Pybus St. Anthony. A very beautiful village it was, with orchards and a stream and old-world cottages and a fine Norman church. But not for its orchards nor its stream nor its church was it famous. It was famous because for many years its listing had been regarded as one of the most important in the whole diocese of Polchester. It was the tradition that the man who went to Pybus St. Anthony had the world in front of him. When likely men for preferment were looked for it was to Pybus St. Anthony that men looked. Heaven alone knows how many Canons and Archdeacons had made their first bow there to the Glebeshire world! Three Deans and a Bishop had, at different times, made it their first stepping-stone to fame. Canon Morrison (Honorary Canon of the Cathedral) was its present incumbent. Less intellectual than some of the earlier incumbents, he was nevertheless a fine fellow. He had been there only three years when symptoms of cancer of the throat had appeared. He had been operated on in London, and at first it had seemed that he would recover. Then the dreaded signs had reappeared; he had wished, poor man, to surrender the living, but because there was yet hope the Chapter, in whose gift the living was, had insisted on his remaining.
A week ago, however, he had collapsed. It was feared now that at any moment he might die. The Archdeacon was very sorry for Morrison. He liked him, and was deeply touched by his tragedy; nevertheless one must face facts; it was probable that at any moment now the Chapter would be forced to make a new appointment.
He had been aware--he did not disguise it from himself in the least--for some time now of the way that the appointment must go. There was a young man, the Rev. Rex Forsyth by name, who, in his judgment, could be the only possible man. Young Forsyth was, at the present moment, chaplain to the Bishop of St. Minworth. St. Minworth was only a Suffragan Bishopric, and it could not honestly be said that there was a great deal for Mr. Forsyth to do there. But it was not because the Archdeacon thought that the young man ought to have more to do that he wished to move him to Pybus St. Anthony. Far from it! The Archdeacon, in the deep secrecy of his own heart, could not honestly admit that young Forsyth was a very hard worker --he liked hunting and whist and a good bottle of wine...he was that kind of man.
Where, then, were his qualifications as Canon Morrison's successor? Well, quite honestly--and the Archdeacon was one of the honestest men alive--his qualifications belonged more especially to his ancestors rather than to himself. In the Archdeacon's opinion there had been too manyclevermen of Pybus. Time now for anormalman. Morrison was normal and Forsyth would be more normal still.
He was in fact first cousin to young Johnny St. Leath and therefore a very near relation of the Countess herself. His father was the fourth son of the Earl of Trewithen, and, as every one knows, the Trewithens and the St. Leaths are, for all practical purposes, one and the same family, and divide Glebeshire between them. No one ever quite knew what young Rex Forsyth became a parson for. Some people said he did it for a wager; but however true that might be, he was not very happy with dear old Bishop Clematis and very ready for preferment.
Now the Archdeacon was no snob; he believed in men and women who had long and elaborate family-trees simply because he believed in institutions and because it had always seemed to him a quite obvious fact that the longer any one or anything remained in a place the more chance there was of things being done as they always had been done. It was not in the least because she was a Countess that he thought the old Lady St. Leath a wonderful woman; not wonderful for her looks certainly--no one could call her a beautiful woman--and not wonderful for her intelligence; the Archdeacon had frequently been compelled to admit to himself that she was a little on the stupid side--but wonderful for her capacity for staying where she was like a rock and allowing nothing whatever to move her. In these dangerous days--and what dangerous days they were!--the safety of the country simply depended on a few such figures as the Countess. Queen Victoria was another of them, and for her the Archdeacon had a real and very touching devotion. Thank God he would be able to show a little of it in the prominent part he intended to play in the Polchester Jubilee festivals this year!
Any one could see then that to have young Rex Forsyth close at hand at Pybus St. Anthony was the very best possible thing for the good of Polchester. Lady St. Leath saw it, Mrs. Combermere saw it, Mrs. Sampson saw it, and young Forsyth himself saw it. The Archdeacon entirely failed to understand how there could be any one who did not see it. However, he was afraid that there were one or two in Polchester.... People said that young Forsyth was stupid! Perhaps he was not very bright; all the easier then to direct him in the way that he should go, and throw his forces into the right direction. People said that he cared more for his hunting and his whist than for his work--well, he was young and, at any rate, there was none of the canting hypocrite about him. The Archdeacon hated canting hypocrites!
There had been signs, once and again, of certain anarchists and devilish fellows, who crept up and down the streets of Polchester spreading their wicked mischief, their lying and disintegrating ideas. The Archdeacon was determined to fight them to the very last breath in his body, even as the Black Bishop before him had foughthisenemies. And the Archdeacon had no fear of his victory.
Rex Forsyth at Pybus St. Anthony would be a fine step forward. Have one of these irreligious radicals there, and Heaven alone knew what harm he might wreak. No, Polchester must be saved. Let the rest of the world go to pieces, Polchester would be preserved.
On how many earlier occasions had the Archdeacon surveyed the Chapter, considered it in all its details and weighed up judiciously the elements, good and bad, that composed it. How well he knew them all! First the Dean, mild and polite and amiable, his mind generally busy with his beloved flora and fauna, his flowers and his butterflies, very easy indeed to deal with. Then Archdeacon Witheram, most nobly conscientious, a really devout man, taking his work with a seriousness that was simply admirable, but glued to the details of his own half of the diocese, so that broader and larger questions did not concern him very closely. Bentinck-Major next. The Archdeacon flattered himself that he knew Bentinck-Major through and through--his snobbery, his vanity, his childish pleasure in his position and his cook, his vanity in his own smart appearance! It would be difficult to find words adequate for the scorn with which the Archdeacon regarded that elegant little man. Then Byle, the Precentor. He was, to some extent, an unknown quantity. His chief characteristic perhaps was his hatred of quarrels--he would say or do anything if only he might not be drawn into a "row." "Peace at any price" was his motto, and this, of course, as with the famous Vicar of Bray, involved a good deal of insincerity. The Archdeacon knew that he could not trust him, but a masterful policy of terrorism had always been very successful. Ryle was frankly frightened by the Archdeacon, and a very good thing too! Might he long remain so! Lastly there was Foster, the Diocesan Missioner. Let it be said at once that the Archdeacon hated Foster. Foster had been a thorn in the Archdeacon's side ever since his arrival in Polchester--a thin, shambly-kneed, untidy, pale-faced prig, that was what Foster was! The Archdeacon hated everything about him--his grey hair, his large protruding ears, the pimple on the end of his nose, the baggy knees to his trousers, his thick heavy hands that never seemed to be properly washed.
Nevertheless beneath that hatred the Archdeacon was compelled to a reluctant admiration. The man was fearless, a fanatic if you please, but devoted to his religion, believing in it with a fervour and sincerity that nothing could shake. An able man too, the best preacher in the diocese, better read in every kind of theology than any clergyman in Glebeshire. It was especially for his open mind about new religious ideas that the Archdeacon mistrusted him. No opinion, however heterodox, shocked him. He welcomed new thought and had himself written a book,Christ and the Gospels, that for its learning and broad-mindedness had created a considerable stir. But he was a dull dog, never laughed, never even smiled, lived by himself and kept to himself. He had, in the past, opposed every plan of the Archdeacon's, and opposed it relentlessly, but he was always, thanks to the Archdeacon's efforts, in a minority. The other Canons disliked him; the old Bishop, safely tucked away in his Palace at Carpledon, was, except for his satellite Rogers, his only friend in Polchester.
So much for the Chapter. There was now only one unknown element in the situation--Ronder. Ronder's position was important because he was Treasurer to the Cathedral. His predecessor, Hart-Smith, now promoted to the Deanery of Norwich, had been an able man, but one of the old school, a great friend of Brandon's, seeing eye to eye with him in everything. The Archdeacon then had had his finger very closely upon the Cathedral purse, and Hart-Smith's departure had been a very serious blow. The appointment of the new Canon had been in the hands of the Crown, and Brandon had, of course, had nothing to say to it. However, one glance at Ronder--he had seen him and spoken to him at the Dean's a few days after his arrival--had reassured him. Here, surely, was a man whom he need not fear--an easy, good-natured, rather stupid fellow by the look of him. Brandon hoped to have his finger on the Cathedral purse as tightly in a few weeks' time as he had had it before.
And all this was in no sort of fashion for the Archdeacon's personal advancement or ambition. He was contented with Polchester, and quite prepared to live there for the rest of his days and be buried, with proper ceremonies, when his end came. With all his soul he loved the Cathedral, and if he regarded himself as the principal factor in its good governance and order he did so with a sort of divine fatalism--no credit to him that it was so. Let credit be given to the Lord God who had seen fit to make him what he was and to place in his hands that great charge.
His fault in the matter was, perhaps, that he took it all too simply, that he regarded these men and the other figures in Polchester exactly as he saw them, did not believe that they could ever be anything else. As God had created the world, so did Brandon create Polchester as nearly in his own likeness as might be--there they all were and there, please God, they would all be for ever!
Bending his mind then to this new campaign, he thought that he would go and see the Dean. He knew by this time, he fancied, exactly how to prepare the Dean's mind for the proper reception of an idea, although, in truth, he was as simple over his plots and plans as a child brick-building in its nursery.
About three o'clock one afternoon he prepared to sally forth. The Dean's house was on the other side of the Cathedral, and you had to go down the High Street and then to the left up Orange Street to get to it, an irrational roundabout proceeding that always irritated the Archdeacon. Very splendid he looked, his top-hat shining, his fine high white collar, his spotless black clothes, his boots shapely and smart. (He and Bentinck- Major were, I suppose, the only two clergymen in Polchester who used boot- trees.) But his smartness was in no way an essential with him. Clothed in rags he would still have the grand air. "I often think of him," Miss Dobell once said, "as one of those glorious gondoliers in Venice. How grand he would look!"
However that might be, it is beyond question that the ridiculous clothes that a clergyman of the Church of England is compelled to wear did not make him absurd, nor did he look an over-dressed fop like Bentinck-Major.
Miss Dobell's gondolier was, on this present occasion, in an excellent temper; and meeting his daughter Joan, he felt very genial towards her. Joan had observed, several days before, that the family crisis might be said to be past, and very thankful she was.
She had, at this time, her own happy dreams, so that father and daughter, moved by some genial impulse, stopped and kissed.
"There! my dear!" said the Archdeacon. "And what are you doing this afternoon, Joan?"
"I'm going with mother," she said, "to see Miss Ronder. It's time we called, you know."
"I suppose it is." Brandon patted her cheek. "Everything you want?"
"Yes, father, thank you."
"That's right."
He left the house, humming a little tune. On the second step he paused, as he was in the habit of doing, and surveyed the Precincts--the houses with their shining knockers, their old-fashioned bow-windows and overhanging portals, the Cathedral Green, and the towering front of the Cathedral itself. He was, for a moment, a kind of presiding deity over all this. He loved it and believed in it and trusted it exactly as though it had been the work of his own hands. Halfway towards the Arden Gate he overtook poor old shambling Canon Morphew, who really ought, in the Archdeacon's opinion, to have died long ago. However, as he hadn't died the Archdeacon felt kindly towards him, and he had, when he talked to the old man, a sense of beneficence and charity very warming to the heart.
"Well, Morphew, enjoying the sun?"
Canon Morphew always started when any one spoke to him, being sunk all day deep in dreams of his own, dreams that had their birth somewhere in the heart of the misty dirty rooms where his books were piled ceiling-high and papers blew about the floor.
"Good afternoon...good afternoon, Archdeacon. Pray forgive me. You came upon me unawares."
Brandon moderated his manly stride to the other's shuffling steps.
"Hope you've had none of that tiresome rheumatism troubling you again."
"Rheumatism? Just a twinge--just a twinge.... It belongs to my time of life."
"Oh, don't say that!" The Archdeacon laughed his hearty laugh. "You've many years in front of you yet."
"No, I haven't--and you don't mean it, Archdeacon--you know you don't. A few months perhaps--that's all. The Lord's will be done. But there's a piece of work...a piece of work...."
He ran off into incoherent mumblings. Suddenly, just as they reached the dark shadows of the Arden Gate, he seemed to wake up. His voice was quite vigorous, his eyes, tired and worn as they were, bravely scanned Brandon's health and vigour.
"We all come to it, you know. Yes, we do. The very strongest of us. You're a young man, Archdeacon, by my years, and I hope you may long live to continue your good work in this place. All the same, you'll be old yourself one day. No one escapes.... No one escapes...."
"Well, good-day to you," said the Archdeacon hurriedly. "Good-day to you.... Hope this bright weather continues," and started rather precipitately down the hill, leaving Morphew to find his way by himself.
His impetuosity was soon restrained. He tumbled immediately into a crowd, and pulling himself up abruptly and looking down the High Street he saw that the pavement on both sides of the street was black with people. He was not a man who liked to be jostled, and he was the more uncomfortable in that he discovered that his immediate neighbour was Samuel Hogg, the stout and rubicund landlord of the "Dog and Pilchard" of Seatown. With him was his pretty daughter Annie. Near to them were Mr. John Curtis and Mr. Samuel Croppet, two of the Town Councillors. With none of these gentlemen did the Archdeacon wish to begin a conversation.
And yet it was difficult to know what to do. The High Street pavements were narrow, and the crowd seemed continually to increase. There was a good deal of pushing and laughter and boisterous good-humour. To return up the street again seemed to have something ignominious about it. Brandon decided to satisfy his curiosity, support his dignity and indulge his amiability by staying where he was.
"Good afternoon, Hogg," he said. "What's the disturbance for?"
"Markisses Circus, sir," Hogg lifted his face like a large round sun. "Surely you'd 'eard of it, Archdeacon?"
"Well, I didn't know," said Brandon in his most gracious manner, "that it was this afternoon.... Of course, how stupid of me!"
He smiled round good-naturedly upon them all, and they all smiled back upon him. He was a popular figure in the town; it was felt that his handsome face and splendid presence did the town credit. Also, he always knew his own mind.Andhe was no coward.
He nodded to Curtis and Croppet and then stared in front of him, a fixed genial smile on his face, his fine figure triumphant in the sun. He looked as though he were enjoying himself and was happy because he liked to see his fellow-creatures happy; in reality he was wondering how he could have been so foolish as to forget Marquis' Circus. Why had not Joan said something to him about it? Very careless of her to place him in this unfortunate position.
He looked around him, but he could see no other dignitary of the Church close at hand. How tiresome--really, how tiresome! Moreover, as the timed moment of the procession arrived the crowd increased, and he was now most uncomfortably pressed against other people. He felt a sharp little dig in his stomach, then, turning, found close beside him the flushed anxious, meagre little face of Samuel Bond, the Clerk of the Chapter. Bond's struggle to reach his dignified position in the town had been a severe one, and had only succeeded because of a multitude of self-submissions and abnegations, humilities and contempts, flatteries and sycophancies that would have tired and defeated a less determined soul. But, in the background, there were the figures of Mrs. Bond and four little Bonds to spur him forward. He adored his family. "Whatever I am, I'm a family man," was one of his favourite sayings. In so worthy a cause much sycophancy may be forgiven him. To no one, however, was he so completely sycophantic as to the Archdeacon. He was terrified of the Archdeacon; he would wake up in the middle of the night and think of him, then tremble and cower under the warm protection of Mrs. Bond until sleep rescued him once more.
It was natural, therefore, that however numerous the people in Polchester might be whom the Archdeacon despised, he despised little Bond most of all. And here was little Bond pressed up against him, with the large circumference of the cheerful Mr. Samuel Hogg near by, and the ironical town smartness of Messrs. Curtis and Croppet close at hand. Truly a horrible position.
"Ah, Archdeacon! I didn't see you--indeed I didn't!" The little breathless voice was like a child's penny whistle blown ignorantly. "Just fancy!-- meeting you like this! Hot, isn't it, although it's only February. Yes.... Hot indeed. I didn't know you cared for processions, Archdeacon----"
"I don't," said Brandon. "I hadn't realised that there was a procession. Stupidly, I had forgotten----"
"Well, well," came the good-natured voice of Mr. Hogg. "It'll do us no harm, Archdeacon--no harm at all. I forget whether you rightly know my little girl. This is Annie--come out to see the procession with her father."
The Archdeacon was compelled to shake hands. He did it very graciously. She was certainly a fine girl--tall, strong, full-breasted, with dark colour and raven black hair; curious, her eyes, very large and bright. They stared full at you, but past you, as though they had decided that you were of insufficient interest.
Annie thus gazed at the Archdeacon and said no word. Any further intimacies were prevented by approach of the procession. To the present generation Marquis' Circus would not appear, I suppose, very wonderful. To many of us, thirty years ago, it seemed the final expression of Oriental splendour and display.
There were murmurs and cries of "Here they come! Here they come! 'Ere they be!" Every one pressed forward; Mr. Bond was nearly thrown off his feet and caught at the lapel of the Archdeacon's coat to save himself. Only the huge black eyes of Annie Hogg displayed no interest. The procession had started from the meadows beyond the Cathedral and, after discreetly avoiding the Precincts, was to plunge down the High Street, pass through the Market-place and vanish up Orange Street--to follow, in fact, the very path that the Archdeacon intended to pursue.
A band could be heard, there was an astounded hush (the whole of the High Street holding its breath), then the herald appeared.
He was, perhaps, a rather shabby fellow, wearing the tarnished red and gold of many a procession, but he walked confidently, holding in his hand a tall wooden truncheon gay with paper-gilt, having his round cap of cloth of gold set rakishly on one side of his head. After him came the band, also in tarnished cloth of gold and looking as though they would have been a trifle ashamed of themselves had they not been deeply involved in the intricacies of their music. After the band came four rather shabby riders on horseback, then some men dressed apparently in admiring imitation of Charles II.; then, to the wonder and whispered incredulity of the crowd, Britannia on her triumphal car. The car--an elaborate cart, with gilt wheels and strange cardboard figures of dolphins and Father Neptune--had in its centre a high seat painted white and perched on a kind of box. Seated on this throne was Britannia herself--a large, full-bosomed, flaxen-haired lady in white flowing robes, and having a very anxious expression of countenance, as, indeed, poor thing, was natural enough, because the cart rocked the box and the box yet more violently rocked the chair. At any moment, it seemed, might she be precipitated, a fallen goddess, among the crowd, and the fact that the High Street was on a slope of considerable sharpness did not add to her ease and comfort. Two stout gentlemen, perspiration bedewing their foreheads, strove to restrain the ponies, and their classic clothing, that turned them into rather tattered Bacchuses, did not make them less incongruous.
Britannia and her agony, however, were soon forgotten in the ferocious excitements that followed her. Here were two camels, tired and dusty, with that look of bored and indifferent superiority that belongs to their tribe, two elephants, two clowns, and last, but of course the climax of the whole affair, a cage in which there could be seen behind the iron bars a lion and a lioness, jolted haplessly from side to side, but too deeply shamed and indignant to do more than reproach the crowd with their burning eyes. Finally, another clown bearing a sandwich-board on which was printed in large red letters "Marquis' Circus--the Finest in the World--Renowned through Europe--Come to the Church Meadows and see the Fun"--and so on.
As this glorious procession passed down the High Street the crowd expressed its admiration in silent whispering. There was no loud applause; nevertheless, Mr. Marquis, were he present, must have felt the air electric with praise. It was murmured that Britannia was Mrs. Marquis, and, if that were true, she must have given her spouse afterwards, in the sanctity of their privacy, a very grateful account of her reception.
When the band had passed a little way down the street and their somewhat raucous notes were modified by distance, the sun came out in especial glory, as though to take his own peep at the show, the gilt and cloth of gold shone and gleamed, the chair of Britannia rocked as though it were bursting with pride, and the Cathedral bells, as though they too wished to lend their dignified blessing to the scene, began to ring for Evensong. A sentimental observer, had he been present, might have imagined that the old town was glad to have once again an excuse for some display, and preened itself and showed forth its richest and warmest colours and wondered, perhaps, whether after all the drab and interesting citizens of to-day were not minded to return to the gayer and happier old times. Quite a noise, too, of chatter and trumpets and bells and laughter. Even the Archdeacon forgot his official smile and laughed like a boy.
It was then that the terrible thing happened. Somewhere at the lower end of the High Street the procession was held up and the chariot had suddenly to pull itself back upon its wheels, and the band were able to breathe freely for a minute, to gaze about them and to wipe the sweat from their brows; even in February blowing and thumping "all round the town" was a warm business.
Now, just opposite the Archdeacon were the two elephants, checked by the sudden pause. Behind them was the cage with the lions, who, now that the jolting had ceased, could collect their scattered indignities and roar a little in exasperated protest. The elephants, too, perhaps felt the humility of their position, accustomed though they might be to it by many years of sordid slavery. It may be, too, that the sight of that patronising and ignorant crowd, the crush and pack of the High Street, the silly sniggering, the triumphant jangle of the Cathedral bells, thrust through their slow and heavy brains some vision long faded now, but for an instant revived, of their green jungles, their hot suns, their ancient royalty and might. They realised perhaps a sudden instinct of their power, that they could with one lifting of the hoof crush these midgets that hemmed them in back to the pulp whence they came, and so go roaming and bellowing their freedom through the streets and ways of the city. The larger of the two suddenly raised his head and trumpeted; with his dim uplifted eyes he caught sight of the Archdeacon's rich and gleaming top- hat shining, as an emblem of the city's majesty, above the crowd. It gleamed in the sun, and he hated it. He trumpeted again and yet again, then, with a heavy lurching movement, stumbled towards the pavement, and with little fierce eyes and uplifted trunk heaved towards his enemies.
The crowd, with screams and cries, fell back in agitated confusion. The Archdeacon, caught by surprise, scarcely realising what had occurred, blinded a little by the sun, stood where he was. In another movement his top-hat was snatched from his head and tossed into air....
He felt the animal's hot breath upon his face, heard the shouts and cries around him, and, in very natural alarm, started back, caught at anything for safety (he had tumbled upon the broad and protective chest of Samuel Hogg), and had a general impression of whirling figures, of suns and roofs and shining faces and, finally, the high winds of heaven blowing upon his bare head.
In another moment the incident was closed. The courtier of Charles II. had rushed up; the elephant was pulled and hustled and kicked; for him swiftly the vision of power and glory and vengeance was over, and once again he was the tied and governed prisoner of modern civilisation. The top-hat lay, a battered and hapless remnant, beneath the feet of the now advancing procession.
Once the crowd realised that the danger was over a roar of laughter went up to heaven. There were shouts and cries. The Archdeacon tried to smile. He heard in dim confusion the cheery laugh of Samuel Hogg, he caught the comment of Croppet and the rest.
With only one thought that he must hide himself, indignation, humiliation, amazement that such a thing could be in his heart, he backed, turned, almost ran, finding at last sudden refuge in Bennett's book-shop. How wonderful was the dark rich security of that enclosure! The shop was always in a half-dusk and the gas burnt in its dim globes during most of the day. All the richer and handsomer gleamed the rows of volumes, the morocco and the leather and the cloth. Old Mr. Bennett himself, the son of the famous man who had known Scott and Byron, was now a prodigious age (in the town his nickname was Methusalem), but he still liked to sit in the shop in a high chair, his white beard in bright contrast with the chaste selection of the newest works arranged in front of him. He might himself have been the Spirit of Select Literature summoned out of the vasty deep by the Cultured Spirits of Polchester.
Into this splendid temple of letters the Archdeacon came, halted, breathless, bewildered, tumbled. He saw at first only dimly. He was aware that old Mr. Bennett, with an exclamation of surprise, rose in his chair. Then he perceived that two others were in the shop; finally, that these two were the Dean and Ronder, the men of all others in Polchester whom he least wished to find there.