The Cathedral Part 48

"Yes. I mean--could you speak to her? Tell her, in some way, to be more careful, that she's in danger. Women know how to do these things. I want to find somebody."

He paused. _Did_ he want to find somebody? Why this strange tenderness towards Mrs. Brandon of which he was quite suddenly conscious?

Was it his disgust of Miss Milton, so that he could not bear to think of any one in the power of such a woman?

"Warn her?" said Ellen. "Then she _is_ in danger."

"Only if, as you say, every one is talking. I'm sorry for her."

They had come to the parting of their ways. "No. I don't know her well enough for that. She wouldn't take it from me. She wouldn't take it from anybody. She's prouder than you'd think. And it's my belief she doesn't care if she is in danger. She'd rather welcome it. That's my belief."

"Good-bye then. I won't ask you to keep our talk quiet. I don't suppose you could if you wanted to. But I will ask you to be kind."

"Why should I be kind? And you know you don't want me to be, really."

"I do want you to be."

"No, it's part of the game you're playing. Or if it isn't, you're changing more than you've ever changed before. Look out! Perhaps it's you that's in danger!"

As he turned up Orange Street he wondered again what impulse it was that was making him sorry for Mrs. Brandon. He always wished people to be happy--life was easier so--but had he, even yesterday, been told that he would ever feel concern for Mrs. Brandon, that supreme symbol of feminine colourless mediocrity, he would have laughed derisively.

Then the beauty of the hour drove everything else from him. The street climbed straight into the sky, a broad flat sheet of gold, and on its height the monument, perched against the quivering air, was a purple shaft, its gesture proud, haughty, exultant. Suddenly he saw in front of him, moving with quick, excited steps, Mrs. Brandon, an absurdly insignificant figure against that splendour.

He felt as though his thoughts had evoked her out of s.p.a.ce, and as though she was there against her will. Then he felt that he, too, was there against his will, and that he had nothing to do with either the time or the place.

He caught her up. She started nervously when he said, "Good evening, Mrs.

Brandon," and raised her little mouse-face with its mild, hesitating, grey eyes to his. He knew her only slightly and was conscious that she did not like him. That was not his affair; she had become something quite new to him since he had gained this knowledge of her--she was provocative, suggestive, even romantic.

"Good evening, Canon Ronder." She did not smile nor slacken her steps.

"Isn't this a lovely evening?" he said. "If we have this weather next week we shall be lucky indeed."

"Yes, shan't we--shan't we?" she said nervously, not considering him, but staring straight at the street in front of her.

"I think all the preparations are made," Ronder went on in the genial easy voice that he always adopted with children and nervous women. "There should be a tremendous crowd if the weather's fine. People already are pouring in from every part of the country, they tell me--sleeping anywhere, in the fields and the hedges. This old town will be proud of herself."

"Yes, yes," Mrs. Brandon looked about her as though she were trying to find a way of escape. "I'm so glad you think that the weather will be fine. I'm so glad. I think it will myself. I hope Miss Ronder is well."

"Very well, thank you." What _could_ Morris see in her, with her ill- fitting clothes, her skirt trailing a little in the dust, her hat too big and heavy for her head, her hair escaping in little untidy wisps from under it? She looked hot, too, and her nose was s.h.i.+ny.

"You're coming to the Ball of course," he went on, relieved that now they were near the top of the little hill. "It's to be the best Ball the a.s.sembly Rooms have seen since--since Jane Austen."

"Jane Austen?" asked Mrs. Brandon vaguely.

"Well, her time, you know, when dancing was all the rage. We ought to have more dances here, I think, now that there are so many young people about."

"Yes, I agree with you. My daughter is coming out at the Ball."

"Oh, is she? I'm sure she'll have a good time. She's so pretty. Every one's fond of her."

He waited, but apparently Mrs. Brandon had nothing more to say. There was a pause, then Mrs. Brandon, as though she had been suddenly pushed to it by some one behind her, held out her hand....

"Good evening, Canon Ronder."

He said good-bye and watched her for a moment as she went up past the neat little villas, her dress trailing behind her, her hat bobbing with every step. He looked up at the absurd figure on the top of the monument, the gentleman in frock-coat and tall hat commemorated there. The light had left him. He was not purple now but a dull grey. He, too, had doubtless had his romance, blood and tears, anger and agony for somebody. How hard to keep out of such things, and yet one must if one is to achieve anything. Keep out of it, detached, observant, comfortable. Strange that in life comfort should be so difficult to attain!

Climbing Green Lane he was surprised to feel how hot it was. The trees that cl.u.s.tered over his head seemed to have gathered together all the heat of the day. Everything conspired to annoy him! Bodger's Street, when he turned into it, was, from his point of view, at its very worst, crowded and smelly and rocking with noise. The fields behind Bodger's Street and Canon's Yard sloped down the hill then up again out into the country beyond.

It was here on this farther hill that the gipsies had been allowed to pitch their caravans, and that the Fair was already preparing its splendours. It was through these gates that the countrymen would penetrate the town's defences, just as on the other side, low down in Seatown on the Pol's banks, the seafaring men, fishermen and sailors and merchantmen, were gathering. Bodger's Street was already alive with the antic.i.p.ation of the coming week's festivities. Gas-jets were flaming behind hucksters'

booths, all the population of the place was out on the street enjoying the fine summer evening, shouting, laughing, singing, quarrelling. The effect of the street illumined by these uncertain flares that leapt unnaturally against the white shadow of the summer sky was of something mediaeval, and that impression was deepened by the overhanging structure of the Cathedral that covered the faint blue and its little pink clouds like a swinging spider's web.

Ronder, however, was not now thinking of the town. His mind was fixed upon his approaching interview with Foster. Foster had just paid a visit, quite unofficial and on a private personal basis, to Wistons, to sound him about the Pybus living and his action if he were offered it.

Ronder understood men very much better than he understood women. He understood Foster so long as ambition and religion were his motives, but there was something else in play that he did not understand. It was not only that Foster did not like him--he doubted whether Foster liked anybody except the Bishop--it was rather perhaps that Foster did not like himself.

Now it is the first rule of fanaticism that you should be so lost in the impulse of your inspiration that you should have no power left with which to consider yourself at all. Foster was undoubtedly a fanatic, but he did consider himself and even despised himself. Ronder distrusted self- contempt in a man simply because nothing made him so uncomfortable as those moments of his own when he wondered whether he were all that he thought himself. Those moments did not last long, but he hated them so bitterly that he could not bear to see them at work in other people.

Foster was the kind of fanatic who might at any minute decide to put peas in his shoes and walk to Jerusalem; did he so decide, he would abandon, for that decision, all the purposes for which he might at the time be working. Ronder would certainly never walk to Jerusalem.

The silence and peace of Canon's Yard when he left Bodger's Street was almost dramatic. All that penetrated there was a subdued buzz with an occasional shrill note as it might be on a penny whistle. The Yard was dark, lit only by a single lamp, and the cobbles uneven. Lights here and there set in the crooked old windows were secret and uncommunicative: the Cathedral towers seemed immensely tall against the dusk. It would not be dark for another hour and a half, but in those old rooms with their small cas.e.m.e.nts light was thin and uncertain.

He climbed the rickety stairs to Foster's rooms. As always, something made him pause outside Foster's door and listen. All the sounds of the old building seemed to come up to him; not human voices and movements, but the life of the old house itself, the creaking protests of stairways, the sighs of reluctant doors, the harping groans of ill-mannered window- frames, the coughs and wheezes of trembling walls, the shudders of ill- boding banisters.

"This house will collapse, the first gale," he thought, and suddenly the Cathedral chimes, striking the half-hour, crashed through the wall, knocking and echoing as though their clatter belonged to that very house.

The echo died, and the old place recommenced its murmuring.

Foster, blinking like an old owl, came to the door and, without a word, led the way into his untidy room. He cleared a chair of papers and books and Ronder sat down.

"Well?" said Ronder.

Foster was in a state of overpowering excitement, but he looked to Ronder older and more worn than a week ago. There were dark pouches under his eyes, his cheeks were drawn, and his untidy grey hair seemed thin and ragged--here too long, there showing the skull gaunt and white beneath it. His eyes burnt with a splendid flame; in them there was the light of eternal life.

"Well?" said Ronder again, as Foster did not answer his first question.

"He's coming," Foster cried, striding about the room, his shabby slippers giving a ghostly tip-tap behind him. "He's coming! Of course I had never doubted it, but I hadn't expected that he would be so eager as he is. He let himself go to me at once. Of course he knew that I wasn't official, that I had no backing at all. He's quite prepared for things to go the other way, although I told him that I thought there would be little chance of that if we all worked together. He didn't ask many questions. He knows all the conditions well. Since I saw him last he's gained in every way-- wiser, better disciplined, more sure of himself--everything that I have never been...." Foster paused, then went on. "I think never in all my life have I felt affection so go out to another human being. He is a man after my own heart--a child of G.o.d, an inheritor of Eternal Life, a leader of men----"

Ronder interrupted him.

"Yes, but as to detail. Did you discuss that? He knew of the opposition?"

Foster waved his hand contemptuously. "Brandon? What does that amount to?

Why, even in the week that I have been away his power has lessened. The hand of G.o.d is against him. Everything is going wrong with him. I loathe scandal, but there is actually talk going on in the town about his wife. I could feel pity for the man were he not so dangerous."

"You are wrong there, Foster," Ronder said eagerly. "Brandon isn't finished yet--by no manner of means. He still has most of the town behind him and a big majority with the Cathedral people. He stands for what they think or _don't_ think--old ideas, conservatism, every established dogma you can put your hand on, bad music, traditionalism, superst.i.tion and carelessness. It is not Brandon himself we are fighting, but what he stands for."

Foster stopped and looked down at Ronder. "You'll forgive me if I speak my mind," he said. "I'm an older man than you are, and in any case it's my way to say what I think. You know that by this time. You've made a mistake in allowing this quarrel with Brandon to become so personal a matter."

Ronder flushed angrily.

"Allowing!" he retorted. "As though that were not the very thing that I've tried to prevent it from becoming. But the old fool has rushed out and shouted his grievances to everybody. I suppose you've heard of the ridiculous quarrel we had coming away from Carpledon. The whole town knows of it. There never was a more ridiculous scene. He stood in the middle of the road and screamed like a madman. It's my belief he _is_ going mad! A precious lot I had to do with that. I was as amiable as possible.