The Cathedral Part 61

As he came into the hall Mrs. Brandon was crossing it, also furtively.

They saw one another and stood staring. She would have spoken, but something in his face terrified her, terrified her so desperately that she suddenly turned and stumbled upstairs, repeating some words over and over to herself. He did not move, but stayed there watching until she had gone.

Something made him change his clothes. He put on trousers and an old overcoat and a shabby old clerical hat. He was a long time in his dressing-room, and he was a while before his looking-gla.s.s in his shirt and drawers, staring as though he were trying to find himself.

While he looked he fancied that some one was behind him, and he searched for his shadow in the gla.s.s, but could find nothing. He moved cautiously out of the house, closing the heavy hall-door very softly behind him; the afternoon was advanced, and the faint fair shadows of the summer evening were stealing from place to place.

He had intended to go at once to Morris's house, but his head was now aching so violently that he thought he would walk a little first so that he might have more control. That was what he wanted, self-control! self- control! That was their plot, to make him lose command of himself, so that he should show to every one that he was unfit to hold his position. He must have perfect control of everything--his voice, his body, his thoughts. And that was why, just now, he must walk in the darker places, in the smaller streets, until soon he would be, outwardly, himself again.

So he chose for his walk the little dark winding path that runs steeply from the Cathedral, along behind Canon's Yard and Bodger's Street, down to the Pol. It was dark here, even on this lovely summer evening, and no one was about, but sounds broke through, cries and bells and the distant bray of bands, and from the hill opposite the clash of the Fair.

At the bottom of the path he stood for a while looking down the bank to the river; here the Pol runs very quietly and sweetly, like a little country river. He crossed it and, still moving like a man in a dream, started up the hill on the other side. He was not, now, consciously thinking of anything at all; he was aware only of a great pain at his heart and a terrible loneliness. Loneliness! What an agony! No one near him, no one to speak to him, every eye mocking him--G.o.d as well, far, far away from him, hidden by walls and hills.

As he climbed upward the Fair came nearer to him. He did not notice it. He crossed a path and was at a turnstile. A man asked him for money. He paid a shilling and moved forward. He liked crowds; he wanted crowds now.

Either crowds or no one. Crowds where he would be lost and not noticed.

So many thousands were there, but nevertheless he was noticed. That was the Archdeacon. Who would have thought that he would come to the Fair? Too grand. But there he was. Yes, that was the Archdeacon. That tall man in the soft black hat. Yes, some noticed him. But many thousands did not. The Fair was packed; strangers from all the county over, sailors and gipsies and farmers and tramps, women no better than they should be, and shop- girls and decent farmers' wives, and village girls--all sorts! Thousands, of course, to whom the Archdeacon meant nothing.

And that _was_ a Fair, the most wonderful our town had ever seen, the most wonderful it ever was to see! As with many other things, that Jubilee Fair marked a period. No Fairs again like the good old Fairs--general education has seen to that.

It was a Fair, as there are still some to remember, that had in it a strange element of fantasy. All the accustomed accompaniments of Fairs were there--The Two Fat Sisters (outside whose booth a notice was posted begging the public not to prod with umbrellas to discover whether the Fat were Fat or Wadding); Trixie, the little lady with neither arms nor legs, sews and writes with her teeth; the Great Albert, the strongest man in Europe, who will lift weights against all comers; Battling Edwardes, the Champion Boxer of the Southern Counties; Hippo's World Circus, with six monkeys, two lions, three tigers and a rhino; all the pistol-firing, ball- throwing, coconut contrivances conceivable, and roundabouts at every turn.

All these were there, but behind them, on the outskirts of them and yet in the very heart of them, there were other unaccustomed things.

Some said that a ship from the East had arrived at Drymouth, and that certain jugglers and Chinese and foreign merchants, instead of going on to London as they had intended, turned to Polchester. How do I know at this time of day? How do we, any of us, know how anything gets here, and what does it matter? But there is at this very moment, living in the magnificently renovated Seatown, an old Chinaman, who came in Jubilee Year, and has been there ever since, doing washing and behaving with admirable propriety, no sign of opium about him anywhere. One element that they introduced was Colour. Our modern Fairs are not very strong in the element of Colour. It is true that one of the roundabouts was ablaze with gilt and tinsel, and in the centre of it, whence comes the music, there were women with brazen faces and bosoms of gold. It is true also that outside the Circus and the Fat Sisters and Battling Edwardes there were flaming pictures with reds and yellows thrown about like temperance tracts, but the modern figures in these pictures spoilt the colour, the photography spoilt it--too much reality where there should have been mystery, too much mystery where realism was needed.

But here, only two yards from the Circus, was a booth hung with strange cloths, purple and yellow and crimson, and behind the wooden boards a man and a woman with brown faces and busy, twirling, twisting, brown hands, were making strange sweets which they wrapped into coloured packets, and on the other side of the Fat Sisters there was a tent with Li Hung above it in letters of gold and red, and inside the tents, boards on trestles, and on the boards a long purple cloth, and on the cloth little toys and figures and images, all of the gayest colours and the strangest shapes, and all as cheap as nothing.

Farther down the lane of booths was the tent of Hayakawa the Juggler. A little boy in primrose-coloured tights turned, on a board outside the tent, round and round and round on his head like a teetotum, and inside, once every half-hour, Hayakawa, in a lovely jacket of gold and silver, gave his entertainment, eating fire, piercing himself with silver swords, finding white mice in his toes, and pulling ribbons of crimson and scarlet out of his ears.

Farther away again there were the Brothers Gomez, Spaniards perhaps, dark, magnificent in figure, running on one wire across the air, balancing sunshades on their noses, leaping, jumping, standing pyramid-high, their muscles gleaming like billiard-b.a.l.l.s.

And behind and before and in and out there were strange figures moving through the Fair, strange voices raised against the evening sky, strange smells of cooking, strange songs suddenly rising, dying as soon as heard.

Only a breath away the English fields were quietly lying safe behind their hedges and the English sky changed from blue to green and from green to mother-of-pearl, and from mother-of-pearl to ivory, and stars stabbed, like silver nails, the great canopy of heaven, and the Cathedral bells rang peal after peal above the slowly lighting town.

Brandon was conscious of little of this as he moved on. Even the thought of Morris had faded from him. He could not think consecutively. His mind was broken up like a mirror that had been smashed into a thousand pieces.

He was most truly in a dream. Soon he would wake up, out of this noise, away from these cries and lights, and would find it all as he had for so many years known it. He would be sitting in his drawing-room, his legs stretched out, his wife and daughter near to him, the rumble of the organ coming through the wall to them, thinking perhaps of to-morrow's duties, the town quiet all around them, friends and well-wishers everywhere, no terrible pain in his head, happily arranging how everything should be...

happy...happy.... Ah! how happy that real life was! When he awoke from his dream he would realise that and thank G.o.d for it. When he awoke.... He stumbled over something, and looking up realised that he was in a very crowded part of the Fair, a fire was blazing somewhere near, gas-jets, although the evening was bright and clear, were naming, screams and cries seemed to make the very sky rock above his head.

Where was he? What was he doing here? Why had he come? He would go home.

He turned.

He turned to face the fire that leapt close at his heel. It was burning at the back of a caravan, in a dark cul-de-sac away from the main thoroughfare; to its blazing light the bare boards and ugly plankings of the booth, splashed here and there with torn paper that rustled a little in the evening breeze, were all that offered themselves. Near by a horse, untethered, was quietly nosing at the trodden soil.

Behind the caravan the field ran down to a ditch and thick hedging.

Brandon stared at the fire as though absorbed by its light. What did he see there? Visions perhaps? Did he see the Cathedral, the Precincts, the quiet circle of demure old houses, his own door, his own bedroom? Did he see his wife moving hurriedly about the room, opening drawers and shutting them, pausing for a moment to listen, then coming out, closing the door, listening again, then stepping downstairs, pausing for a moment in the hall to lay something on the table, then stepping out into the green wavering evening light? Or did the flames make pictures for him of the deserted railway-station, the long platform, lit only by one lamp, two figures meeting, exchanging almost no word, pacing for a little in silence the dreary s.p.a.ces, stepping back as the London express rolled in--such a safe night to choose for escape--then burying themselves in it like rabbits in their burrow?

Did his vision lead him back to the deserted house, silent save for its ticking clocks, black in that ring of lights and bells and shouting voices?

Or was he conscious only of the warmth and the life of the fire, of some sudden companionship with the woman bending over it to stir the sticks and lift some pot from the heart of the flame? He was feeling, perhaps, a sudden peace here and a silence, and was aware of the stars breaking into beauty one by one above his head.

But his peace, if for a moment he had found it, was soon interrupted. A voice that he knew came across to him from the other side of the fire.

"Why, Archdeacon, who would have thought to find you here?"

He looked up and saw, through the fire, the face of Davray the painter.

He turned to go, and at once Davray was at his side.

"No. Don't go. You're in my country now, Archdeacon, not your own. You're not c.o.c.k of _this_ walk, you know. Last time we met you thought you owned the place. Well, you can't think you own this. Fight it out, Mr.

Archdeacon, fight it out."

Brandon answered:

"I have no quarrel with you, Mr. Davray. Nor have I anything to say to you."

"No quarrel? I like that. I'd knock your face in for two-pence, you blasted hypocrite. And I will too. All free ground here."

Davray's voice was shrill. He was swaying on his legs. The woman looked up from the fire and watched them.

Brandon turned his back to him and saw, facing him, Samuel Hogg and some men behind him.

"Why, good evening, Mr. Archdeacon," said Hogg, taking off his hat and bowing. "What a delightful place for a meeting!"

Brandon said quietly, "Is there anything you want with me?" He realised at once that Hogg was drunk.

"Nothing," said Hogg, "except to give you a d.a.m.ned good hiding. I've been waiting for that these many weeks. See him, boys," he continued, turning to the men behind him. "'Ere's this parson who ruined my daughter--as fine a girl as ever you've seen--ruined 'er, he did--him and his blasted son.

What d'you say, boys? Is it right for him to be paradin' round here as proud as a peac.o.c.k and n.o.body touchin' him? What d'you say to givin' him a d.a.m.ned good hiding?"

The men smiled and pressed forward. Davray from the other side suddenly lurched into Brandon. Brandon struck out, and Davray fell and lay where he fell.

Hogg cried, "Now for 'im, boys----", and at once they were upon him.

Hogg's face rose before Brandon's, extended, magnified in all its details.

Brandon hit out and then was conscious of blows upon his face, of some one kicking him in the back, of himself hitting wildly, of the fire leaping mountains-high behind him, of a woman's cry, of something trickling down into his eye, of sudden contact with warm, naked, sweating flesh, of a small pinched face, the eyes almost closed, rising before him and falling again, of a shout, then sudden silence and himself on his knees groping in darkness for his hat, of his voice far from him murmuring to him, "It's all right.... It's my hat...it's my hat I must find."

He wiped his forehead. The back of his hand was covered with blood.

He saw once again the fire, low now and darkly illumined by some more distant light, heard the scream of the merry-go-round, stared about him and saw no living soul, climbed to his feet and saw the stars, then very slowly, like a blind man in the dark, felt his way to the field's edge, found a gate, pa.s.sed through and collapsed, shuddering in the hedge's darkness.

Chapter VII

Tuesday, June 22: III. Torchlight