The Cathedral Part 22

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 wors.h.i.+ppers out of that mountain of sacrificial stone.

She looked up and saw a green cloud, faintly green like early spring leaf.a.ge, 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 were _not_ right 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 gra.s.s, rising to her chin.

IV

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 gla.s.s 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d meant us to be friends, meant me to bring you happiness--a little...."

"Happiness?" she s.h.i.+vered. "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 G.o.d?"

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.

Chapter II

Souls on Sunday

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 of _Treasure Island_. It is the fas.h.i.+on, 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 G.o.d, 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 Glebes.h.i.+re, the intermarrying that had been going on for generations was astonis.h.i.+ng. 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 s.p.a.ces 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 s.h.i.+rt 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.