The Cathedral Part 47

"It is not our business," he answered angrily. "It is not our affair."

"Very well, sir." She got up. "It's good of you to give me your opinion.

It is not our affair. Quite so. But it is Archdeacon Brandon's affair. He should see this letter. I thought that perhaps you yourself might like to speak to him----" she paused.

"I will have nothing to do with it," he answered, getting up and standing over her. "You did very wrong to keep the letter. You are cherishing evil pa.s.sions in your heart, Miss Milton, that will bring you nothing but harm and sorrow in the end. You have come to me for advice, you say. Well, I give it to you. Burn that letter and forget what you know."

Her complexion had changed to a strange muddy grey as he spoke.

"There are others in this town, Canon Ronder," she said, "who are cherishing much the same pa.s.sions as myself, although they may not realise it. I thought it wise to tell you what I know. As you will not help me, I know now what to do. I am grateful for your advice--which, however, I do not think you wish me to follow."

With one last look at him she moved softly to the door and was gone. She seemed to him to leave some muddy impression of her personality upon the walls and furniture of the room. He flung up the window, walked about rubbing his hands against one another behind his back, hating everything around him.

The words of the note repeated themselves again and again in his head.

"Dearest...safe hand...dreadfully disappointed.... Dearest."

Those two! He saw Morris, with his weak face, his mild eyes, his rather shabby clothes, his hesitating manner, his thinning hair--and Mrs.

Brandon, so mediocre that no one ever noticed her, never noticed anything about her--what she wore, what she said, what she did, anything!

Those two! Ghosts! and in love so that they would risk loss of everything --reputation, possessions, family--that they might obtain their desire! In love as he had never been in all his life!

His thoughts turned, with a little shudder, to Miss Milton. She had come to him because she thought that he would like to share in her revenge.

That, more than anything, hurt him, bringing him down to her base, sordid level, making him fellow-conspirator with her, plotting...ugh! How cruelly unfair that he, upright, generous, should be involved like this so meanly.

He washed his hands in the little dressing-room near the study, scrubbing them as though the contact with Miss Milton still lingered there. Hating his own company, he went downstairs, where he found Ellen Stiles, having had a very happy tea with his aunt, preparing to depart.

"Going, Ellen?" he asked.

She was in the highest spirits and a hat of vivid green.

"Yes, I must go. I've been here ever so long. We've had a perfectly lovely time, talking all about poor Mrs. Maynard and her consumption. There's simply no hope for her, I'm afraid; it's such a shame when she has four small children; but as I told her yesterday, it's really best to make up one's mind to the worst, and there'll be no money for the poor little things after she's gone. I don't know what they'll do."

"You must have cheered her up," said Ronder.

"Well, I don't know about that. Like all consumptives she will persist in thinking that she's going to get well. Of course, if she had money enough to go to Davos or somewhere...but she hasn't, so there's simply no hope at all."

"If you are going along I'll walk part of the way with you," said Ronder.

"That _will_ be nice." Ellen kissed Miss Ronder very affectionately.

"Good-bye, you darling. I have had a nice time. Won't it be awful if it's wet next week? Simply everything will be ruined. I don't see much chance of its being fine myself. Still you never can tell."

They went out together. The Precincts was quiet and deserted; a bell, below in the sunny town, was ringing for Evensong. "Morris's church, perhaps," thought Ronder. The light was stretched like a screen of coloured silk across the bright green of the Cathedral square; the great Church itself was in shadow, misty behind the sun, and shifting from shade to shade as though it were under water.

When they had walked a little way Ellen said: "What's the matter?"

"The matter?" Ronder echoed.

"Yes. You're looking worried, and that's so rare with you that when it happens one's interested."

He hesitated, looking at her and almost stopping in his walk. An infernal nuisance if Ellen Stiles were to choose this moment for the exercise of her unfortunate curiosity! He had intended to go down High Street with her and then to go by way of Orange Street to Foster's rooms; but one could reach Foster more easily by the little crooked street behind the Cathedral. He would say good-bye to her here.... Then another thought struck him. He would go on with her.

"Isn't your curiosity terrible, Ellen!" he said, laughing. "If you didn't happen to have a kind heart hidden somewhere about you, you'd be a perfectly impossible woman. As it is, I'm not sure that you're not."

"I think perhaps I am," Ellen answered, laughing. "I do take a great interest in other people's affairs. Well, why not? It prevents me from being bored."

"But not from being a bore," said Ronder. "I hate to be unpleasant, but there's nothing more tiresome than being asked why one's in a certain mood. However, leave me alone and I will repay your curiosity by some of my own. Tell me, how much are people talking about Mrs. Brandon and Morris?"

This time she was genuinely surprised. On so many occasions he had checked her love of gossip and scandal and now he was deliberately provoking it.

It was as though he had often lectured her about drinking too much and then had been discovered by her, secretly tippling.

"Oh, everybody's talking, of course," she said. "Although you pretend never to talk scandal you must know enough about the town to know that.

They happen to be talking less just at the moment because n.o.body's thinking of anything but the Jubilee."

"What I want to know," said Ronder, "is how much Brandon is supposed to be aware of--and does he mind?"

"He's aware of nothing," said Ellen decisively. "Nothing at all. He's always looked upon his wife as a piece of furniture, neither very ornamental nor very useful, but still his property, and therefore to be reckoned on as stable and submissive. I don't think that in any case he would ever dream that she could disobey him in anything, but, as it happens, his son's flight to London and his own quarrel with you entirely possess his mind. He talks, eats, thinks, dreams nothing else."

"What would he do, do you think," pursued Ronder, "if he were to discover that there really _was_ something wrong, that she had been unfaithful?"

"Why, is there proof?" asked Ellen Stiles, eagerly, pausing for a moment in her excitement.

The sharp note of eagerness in her voice checked him.

"No--nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. Of course not. And how should I know if there were?"

"You're just the person who would know," answered Ellen decisively.

"However many other people you've hoodwinked, you haven't taken _me_ in all these years. But I'll tell you this as from one friend to another, that you've made the first mistake in your life by allowing this quarrel with Brandon to become so public."

He marvelled again, as he had often marvelled before, at her unerring genius for discovering just the thing to say to her friends that would hurt them most. And yet with that she had a kind heart, as he had had reason often enough to know. Queer things, women!

"It's not my fault if the quarrel's become public," he said. They were turning down the High Street now and he could not show all the vexation that he felt. "It's Brandon's own idiotic character and the love of gossip displayed by this town."

"Well, then," she said, delighted that she had annoyed him and that he was showing his annoyance, "that simply means that you've been defeated by circ.u.mstances. For once they've been too strong for you. If you like that explanation you'd better take it."

"Now, Ellen," he said, "you're trying to make me lose my temper in revenge for my not satisfying your curiosity; give up. You've tried before and you've always failed."

She laughed, putting her hand through his arm.

"Yes, don't let's quarrel," she said. "Isn't it delightful to-night with the sunlight and the excitement and every one out enjoying themselves? I love to see them happy, poor things. It's only the successful and the self-important and the patronising that I want to pull down a little. As soon as I find myself wanting to dig at somebody, I know it's because they're getting above themselves. You'd better be careful. I'm not at all sure that success isn't going to your head."

"Success?" he asked.

"Yes. Don't look so innocent. You've been here only a few months and already you're the only man here who counts. You've beaten Brandon in the very first round, and it's absurd of you to pretend to an old friend like myself that you don't know that you have. But be careful."

The street was shining, wine-coloured, against the black walls that hemmed it in, black walls scattered with sheets of gla.s.s, absurd curtains of muslin, brown, shabby, self-ashamed backs of looking-gla.s.ses, door-k.n.o.bs, flower-pots, and collections of furniture, books and haberdashery.

"Suppose you leave me alone for a moment, Ellen," said Ronder, "and think, of somebody else. What I really want to know is, how intimate are you with Mrs. Brandon?"

"Intimate?"