The Cathedral Part 3

"It's a bit of a blow to you, Aunt Alice, burying yourself down here.

London was the breath of your nostrils. What did you come for? Love of me?"

She looked steadily back at him.

"Not love exactly. Curiosity, perhaps. I want to see at first hand what you'll do. You're the most interesting human being I've ever met, and that isn't prejudice. Aunts do not, as a rule, find their nephews interesting.

And what have you come here for? I a.s.sure you I haven't the least idea."

The door was opened by Mrs. Clay.

"Miss Stiles," she said.

Miss Stiles, who came in, was not handsome. She was large and fat, with a round red face like a sun, and she wore colours too bright for her size.

She had a slow soft voice like the melancholy moo of a cow. She was not a bad woman, but, temperamentally, was made unhappy by the success or good fortune of others. Were you in distress, she would love you, cherish you, never abandon you. She would share her last penny with you, run to the end of the world for you, defend you before the whole of humanity. Were you, however, in robust health, she would hint to every one of a possible cancer; were you popular, it would worry her terribly and she would discover a thousand faults in your character; were you successful in your work, she would pray for your approaching failure lest you should become arrogant. She gossiped without cessation, and always, as it were, to restore the proper balance of the world, to pull down the mighty from their high places, to lift the humble only that they in their turn might be pulled down. She played fluently and execrably on the piano. She spent her day in running from house to house.

She had independent means, lived four months of the year in Polchester (she had been born there and her family had been known there for many generations before her), four months in London, and the rest of the year abroad. She had met Alice Ronder in London and attached herself to her.

She liked the Ronders because they never boasted of their successes, because Alice had a weak heart, because Ronder, who knew her character, half-humorously deprecated his talents, which were, as he knew well enough, no mean ones. She bored Alice Ronder, but Ronder found her useful.

She told him a great deal that he wanted to know, and although she was never accurate in her information, he could separate the wheat from the chaff. She was a walking mischief-maker, but meant no harm to a living soul. She prided herself on her honesty, on saying exactly what she thought to every one. She was kindness itself to her servants, who adored her, as did railway-porters, cabmen and newspaper men. She overtipped wherever she went because "she could not bear not to be liked." In our Polchester world she was an important factor. She was always the first to hear any piece of news in our town, and she gave it a wrong twist just as fast as she could.

She was really delighted to see the Ronders, and told them so with many a.s.surances of affection, but she was a little distressed to find the room so neat and settled. She would have preferred them to be "in a thorough mess" and badly in need of her help.

"My dear Alice, how quick you've been! How clever you are! At the same time I think you'll find there's a good deal to arrange still. The Polchester girls are so slow and always breaking things. I suppose some things have been smashed in the move--nothing very valuable, I hope."

"Lots of things, Ellen," said Ronder, laughing. "We've had the most awful time and badly need your help. It's only this room that Aunt Alice got straight--just to have something to show, you know. And our journey down!

I can't tell you what it was, hardly room to breathe and coming up here in the rain!"

"Oh, you poor things! What a welcome to Polchester! You must simply have hated the look of the whole place. _Such_ a bad introduction, and everything looking as gloomy and depressing as possible. I expect you wished yourselves well out of it. I don't wonder you're depressed. I hope you're not feeling your heart, Alice dear."

"Well, I am a little," acknowledged Miss Ronder. "But I shall go to bed early and get a good night."

"You poor dear! I was afraid you'd be absolutely done up. Now, you're _not_ to get up in the morning and I'll run about and do your shopping for you. I _insist_. How's Mrs. Clay?"

"A little grumpy at having so much to do," said Ronder, "but she'll get over it."

"I'm afraid she's a little ill-tempered at times," said Miss Stiles with satisfaction. "I thought when I came in that she looked out of sorts.

Troubles never come singly, of course."

All was well now and Miss Stiles completely satisfied. She admired the room and the Hermes, and prophesied that, after a week or two, they would probably find things not so bad after all. She drank several cups of tea and pa.s.sed on to general conversation. It was obvious, very soon, that she was bursting with a piece of news.

"I can see, Ellen," said Ronder, humorously observing her, "that you're longing to tell us something."

"Well, it is interesting. What do you think? Falk Brandon has been sent down from Oxford for misbehaviour."

"And who is Falk Brandon?" asked Ronder.

"The Archdeacon's son. His only boy. I've told you about Archdeacon Brandon many times. He thinks he runs the town and has been terribly above himself for a long while. This will pull him down a little. I must say, although I don't want to be uncharitable, that I'm glad of it. It's too absurd the way that he's been having everything his own way here. All the Canons are over ninety and simply give in to him about everything."

"When did this happen?"

"Oh, it's only just happened. He arrived by your train. I saw young George Lascelles as I was on my way up to you. He met him at the station--Falk, I mean--and he didn't pretend to disguise it. George said 'Hullo, Brandon, what are you doing here?' and Falk said 'Oh, I've been sent down'--just like that. Didn't pretend to disguise it. He's always been as brazen as anything. He'll give his father a lot of trouble before he's done."

"There's nothing very terrible," said Ronder, laughing, "in being sent down from Oxford. I've known plenty of good fellows who were."

Miss Stiles looked annoyed. "Oh, but you don't know. It will be terrible for his father. He's the proudest man in England. Some people call it conceit, but, however that may be, he thinks there's nothing like his family. Even poor Mrs. Brandon he's proud of when she isn't there. It will be awful for him that every one should know."

Ronder said nothing.

"You know," said Miss Stiles, who felt that her news had fallen flat, "you'll have to fight him or give in to him. There's no other way here. I hope you'll fight him."

"I?" said Ronder. "Why, I never fight anybody. I'm much too lazy."

"Then you'll never be comfortable here, that's all. He can't bear being crossed. He must have his way about everything. If the Bishop weren't so old and the Dean so stupid.... What we want here is a little life in the place."

"You needn't look to us for that, Ellen," said Ronder. "We've come here to rest----"

"Peace, perfect peace...."

"I don't believe you," said Miss Stiles, tossing her head. "I'd be disappointed to think it of you."

Alice Ronder gave her nephew a curious look, half of amus.e.m.e.nt, half of expectation.

"It's quite true, Ellen," she said. "Now, if you've finished your tea, come and look at the rest of the house."

Chapter III

One of Joan's Days

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, superst.i.tion to go!" It was not as conscious as that, but in effect it was that that it came to. And they were wonderfully a.s.sisted by circ.u.mstances. 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-a-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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, 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 cla.s.s-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 pa.s.sed, and then one morning she came into the drawing-room and found her mother rather bewildered and distressed.