The Cathedral Part 17

"You're afraid?" said Ronder.

Bentinck-Major seemed a little nervous at being caught up so quickly. He looked at Ronder suspiciously. His voice was sharper than it had been.

"Oh, I like Brandon--don't make any mistake about that. He and I together have done some excellent things here. In many ways he's admirable. I don't know what I'd have done sometimes without his backing. All I mean is that he is perhaps a little hasty sometimes."

"Quite," said Ronder. "I can't tell you how you've helped me by what you've told me. I'm sure you're right in everything you've said. If you were to give me a tip then, you'd say that I couldn't do better than follow Brandon. I'll remember that."

"Well, no," said Bentinck-Major rather hastily. "I don't know that I'd quite say that either. Brandon is often wrong. I'm not sure either that he has quite the influence he had. That silly little incident of the elephant the other day--you heard that, didn't you?--well, a trivial thing, but one saw by the way that the town took it that the Archdeacon isn't _quite_ where he was. I agree with him entirely in his policy--to keep things as they always have been. That's the only way to save our Church, in my opinion. As soon as they tell me an idea's new, that's enough for me...I'm down on it at once. But what I _do_ think is that his diplomacy is often faulty. He rushes at things like a bull-- exactly like a bull. A little too confident always. No, if you won't think me conceited--and I believe I'm a modest man--you couldn't do better than come to me--talk things over with me, you know. I'm sure we'll see alike about many things."

"I'm sure we will," said Ronder. "Thank you very much. As you've been so kind I'm sure you won't mind my asking you a few questions. I hope I'm not keeping you from anything."

"Not at all. Not at all," said Bentinck-Major very graciously, and stretching his plump little body back into the arm-chair. "Ask as many questions as you like and I'll do my best to answer them."

Ronder did then, during the next half-hour, ask a great many questions, and he received a great many answers. The answers may not have told him overmuch about the things that he wanted to know, but they did tell him a great deal about Bentinck-Major.

The clock struck four.

Ronder got up.

"You don't know how you've helped me," he said. "You've told me exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you so very much."

Bentinck-Major looked gratified. He had, in fact, thoroughly enjoyed himself.

"Oh, but you'll stay and have some tea, won't you?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that. I've got a pretty busy afternoon still in front of me."

"My wife will be so disappointed."

"You'll let me come another day, won't you?"

"Of course. Of course."

The Canon himself accompanied his guest into the hall and opened the front door for him.

"Any time--any time--that I can help you."

"Thank you so very much. Good-bye."

"Good-bye. Good-bye."

So far so good, but Ronder was aware that his next visit would be quite another affair--and so indeed it proved.

To reach Canon's Yard from Orange Street, Ronder had to go down through Green Lane past the Orchards, and up by a steep path into Bodger's Street and the small houses that have cl.u.s.tered for many years behind the Cathedral. Here once was Saint Margaret's Monastery utterly swept away, until not a stone remained, by Henry VIII.'s servants. Saint Margaret's only memory lingers in the Saint Margaret's Hostel for Women at the top of Bodger's Street, and even that has now a worn and desolate air as though it also were on the edge of departure. In truth, this part of Polchester is neglected and forgotten; it has not sunk like Seatown into dirt and degradation, it has still an air of romance and colour, but the life is gone from it.

Canon's Yard is behind the Hostel and is a little square, shut-in, cobbled place with tall thin houses closing it in and the Cathedral towers overhanging it. Rooks and bells and the rattle of carts upon the cobbles make a perpetual clatter here, and its atmosphere is stuffy and begrimed.

When the Cathedral chimes ring they echo from house to house, from wall to wall, so that it seems as though the bells of a hundred Cathedrals were ringing here. Nevertheless from the high windows of the Yard there is a fine view of orchards and hills and distant woods--a view not to be despised.

The house in which Canon Foster had his rooms is one of the oldest of all the houses. The house was kept by one Mrs. Maddis, who had "run" rooms for the clergy ever since her first marriage, when she was a pretty blushing girl of twenty. She was now a hideous old woman of eighty, and the house was managed by her married daughter, Mrs. Crumpleton. There were three floors and there should have been three clergymen, but for some time the bottom floor had been empty and the middle apartments were let to transient tenants. They were at this moment inhabited by a retired sea- captain.

Foster reigned on the top floor and was quite oblivious of neighbours, landladies, tidiness, and the view--he cared, by nature, for none of these things. Ronder climbed up the dirty dark staircase and knocked on the old oak door that had upon it a dirty visiting card with Foster's name. When he ceased his climb and the noise of his footsteps fell away there was a great silence. Not a sound could be heard. The bells were not chiming, the rooks were not cawing (it was not as yet their time) nor was the voice of Mrs. Crumpleton to be heard, shrill and defiant, as was too often the case. The house was dead; the town was dead; had the world itself suddenly died, like a candle whose light is put out, Foster would not have cared.

Ronder knocked three times with the k.n.o.b of his walking-stick. The man must be out. He was about to turn away and go when the door suddenly opened, as though by a secret life of its own, and the pale face and untidy person of the Canon, like the apparition of a surprised and indignant _revenant_, was apparent.

"May I come in for a moment?" said Ronder. "I won't keep you long."

Foster stared at his visitor, said nothing, opened the door a little wider, and stood aside. Ronder accepted this as an invitation and came in.

"You'd better come into the other room," said Foster, looking about him as though he had been just ruthlessly awakened from an important dream. They pa.s.sed through a little pa.s.sage and an untidy sitting-room into the study.

This was a place piled high with books and its only furniture was a deal table and two straw-bottomed chairs. At the table Foster had obviously been working. Books lay about it and papers, and there was also a pile of ma.n.u.script. Foster looked around him, caught his large ears in his fingers and cracked them, and then suddenly said:

"You'd better sit down. What can I do for you?"

Ronder sat down. It was at once apparent that, whatever the state of the rooms might be, his reluctant host was suddenly very wide awake indeed. He felt, what he had known from the very first meeting, that he was in contact here with a man of brain, of independence, of character. His capacity for amused admiration that was one of the strongest things in him, was roused to the full. Another thing that he had also by now perceived was that Foster was not that type, by now so familiar to us in the pages of French and English fiction, of the lost and bewildered old clergyman whose long nose has been for so many years buried in dusty books that he is unable to smell the real world. Foster was neither lost nor bewildered. He was very much all there.

What could he do for Ronder? Ronder was, for a moment, uncertain. Here, he was happy to think, he must go with the greatest care. He did not smile as he had smiled upon Bentinck-Major. He spoke to Foster as to an equal.

"I can see you're busy," he said. "All the same I'm not going to apologise for coming. I'll tell you frankly that I want your help. At the same time I'll tell you that I don't care whether you give it me or no."

"In what way can I help you?" asked Foster coldly.

"There's to be a Chapter Meeting in a few days' time, isn't there?

Honestly I haven't been here quite long enough yet to know how things stand. Questions may come up, although there's nothing very important this time, I believe. But there may be important things brewing. Now you've been here a great many years and you have your opinion of how things should go. I want your idea of some of the conditions."

"You've come to spy out the land, in fact?"

"Put it that way if you like," said Ronder seriously, "although I don't think spying is exactly the word. You're perfectly at liberty, I mean, to tell anybody that I've been to see you and to repeat to anybody what I say. It simply is that I don't care to take on all the work that's being shoved on to my shoulders without getting the views of those who know the place well."

"Oh, if it's my views you want," cried Foster, suddenly raising his voice and almost shouting, "they're easy enough to discover. They are simply that everything here is abominable, going to wrack and ruin...Now you know what _I_ think."

He looked down at his ma.n.u.script as much as to say, "Well, good afternoon."

"Going to ruin in what way?" asked Ronder.

"In the way that the country is going to ruin--because it has turned its back upon G.o.d."

There was a pause. Suddenly Foster flung out, "Do you believe in G.o.d, Canon Ronder?"

"I think," said Ronder, "the fact that I'm in the position I'm in----"

"Nonsense," interrupted Foster. "That's anybody's answer. You don't look like a spiritual man."

"I'm fat, if that's what you mean," said Ronder smiling. "That's my misfortune."

"If I've been rude," said Foster more mildly, "forgive me. I _am_ rude these days. I've given up trying not to be. The truth is that I'm sick to the heart with all their worldliness, shams, lies, selfishness, idleness. You may be better than they. You may not. I don't know. If you've come here determined to wake them all up and improve things, then I wish you G.o.d-speed. But you won't do it. You needn't think you will. If you've come like the rest to get what you can out of it, then I don't think you'll find my company good for you."

"I certainly haven't come to wake them up," said Ronder. "I don't believe that to be my duty. I'm not made that way. Nor can I honestly believe things to be as bad as you say. But I do intend, with G.o.d's help, to do my best. If that's not good enough for you, then you must abandon me to my fate."

Foster seemed to appreciate that. He nodded his head.