The Cathedral Part 63

"Father, you're hurt!"

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

"Nothing, father--only they're still keeping some dinner--"

"I don't want anything. Where is your mother?"

"She hasn't come back."

"Not come back? Why, where did she go to?"

"I don't know. Gladys says she went out about six."

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

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

AMY.

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

He came across to her, suddenly caught her by the shoulders, and said: "Now, _you'd_ better go, do you hear? They've all left me, your mother, Falk, all of them. They've fallen on me and beaten me. They've kicked me. They've spied on me and mocked me. Well, then, you join them.

Do you hear? What do you stay for? Why do you remain with me? Do you hear?

Do you hear?"

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

"Don't hit me, father. Please, please don't hit me."

He stood over her, staring down at her.

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

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

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

"Let them come in! Let them come in! I--I----"

Suddenly he turned towards her and held out his arms.

"I can't--I can't bear any more." He fell on his knees, burying his face in the shoulder of the chair. Then he cried:

"Oh, G.o.d, spare me now, spare me! I cannot bear any more. Thou hast chastised me enough. Oh, G.o.d, don't take my sanity from me--leave me that.

Oh, G.o.d, leave me that! Thou hast taken everything else. I have been beaten and betrayed and deserted. I confess my wickedness, my arrogance, my pride, but it was in Thy service. Leave me my mind. Oh, G.o.d, spare me, spare me, and forgive her who has sinned so grievously against Thy laws.

Oh, G.o.d, G.o.d, save me from madness, save me from madness."

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

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

"Dear, dear father. I love you so. I love you so. No one shall hurt you.

Father dear, father darling."

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

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

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

Book IV

The Last Stand

Chapter I

In Ronder's House: Ronder, Wistons

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

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

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

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

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

And through it all, above it, behind it and beyond it, towered the figure of the Archdeacon. _He_ was the question, he the centre of the drama.

There were a hundred different stories running around the town as to what exactly had happened to him during those Jubilee days. Was it true that he had taken Miss Milton by the scruff of her long neck and thrown her out of the house? Was it true that he had taken his coat off in the Cloisters and given Ronder two black eyes? (The only drawback to this story was that Ronder showed no sign of bruises.) Had he and Mrs. Brandon fought up and down the house for the whole of a night, Joan a.s.sisting? And, above all, _what_ occurred at the Jubilee Fair? _Had_ Brandon been set upon by a lot of ruffians? Was it true that Samuel Hogg had revenged himself for his daughter's abduction? No one knew. No one knew anything at all.

The only certain thing was that the Archdeacon had a bruise on his temple and a scratch on his cheek, and that he was "queer," oh, yes, very queer indeed!

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

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