Cathedral — Book 3 The Jubilee: Chapter 1 June 17, Thursday: Anticipation

June 17, Thursday: Anticipation It must certainly be difficult for chroniclers of contemporary history to determine significant dates to define the beginning and end of succeeding periods.

But I fancy that any fellow-citizen of mine, if he thinks for a moment, will agree with me that that Jubilee Summer of 1897 was the last manifestation in our town of the separate individual Polchester spirit, of the old spirit that had dwelt in its streets and informed its walls and roofs for hundreds of years past, something as separate and distinct as the smells of Seatown, the chime of the Cathedral bells, the cawing of the Cathedral rooks in the Precinct Elms.

An interesting and, to one reader at least, a pathetic history might be written of the decline and death of that same spirit--not in Polchester alone, but in many another small English town.

From the Boer War of 1899 to the Great War of 1914 stretches that destructive period; the agents of that destruction, the new moneyed classes, the telephone, the telegram, the motor, and last of all, the cinema.

Destruction?

That is, perhaps, too strong a word.

We know that that is simply the stepping from one stage to another of the eternal, the immortal cycle.

The little hamlet embowered in its protecting trees, defended by its beloved hills, the Rock rising gaunt and naked in its midst; then the Cathedral, the Monks, the Baron's Castle, the feudal rule; then the mighty Bishops and the vast all-encircling power of the Church; then the new merchant age, the Elizabethan salt of adventure; then the cosy seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with their domesticities, their little cultures, their comfortable religion, their stay-at-home unimaginative festivities.

Throughout the nineteenth century that spirit lingers, gently repulsing the outside world, reproving new doctrine, repressing new movement...

and the Rock and the Cathedral wait their hours, watching the great sea that, far on the horizon, is bathing its dykes and flooding the distant fields, knowing that the waves are rising higher and higher, and will at last, with full volume, leap upon these little pastures, these green-clad valleys, these tiny hills.

And in that day only the Cathedral and the Rock will stand out above the flood.

And this was a Polchester Jubilee.

There may have been some consciousness of that little old woman driving in her carriage through the London streets, but in the main the Town suddenly took possession, cried aloud that these festivities were for Herself, that for a week at least the Town would assert Herself, bringing into Her celebration the Cathedral that was her chief glory, but of whom, nevertheless, she was afraid; the Rock upon which she was built, that never changed, the country that surrounded and supported her, the wild men who had belonged to her from time immemorial, the River that encircled her.

That week seemed to many, on looking back, a strangely mad time, days informed with a wildness for which there was no discernible reason--men and women and children were seized that week with some licence that they loved while it lasted, but that they looked back upon with fear when it was over.

What had come over them?

Who had been grinning at them?

The strange things that occurred that week seemed to have no individual agent.

No one was responsible.

But life, after that week, was for many people in the town never quite the same again.

On the afternoon of Thursday, June 17, Ronder stood at the window of his study and looked down upon the little orchard, the blazing flowers, the red garden-wall, and the tree-tops on the descending hill, all glazed and sparkling under the hot afternoon sun.

As he looked down, seeing nothing, sunk deeply in his own thoughts, he was aware of extreme moral and spiritual discomfort.

He moved back from the window, making with his fingers a little gesture of discontent and irritation.

He paced his room, stopping absent-mindedly once and again to push in a book that protruded from the shelves, staying to finger things on his writing-table, jolting against a chair with his foot as he moved.

At last he flung himself into his deep leather chair and stared fixedly at an old faded silk fire-guard, with its shadowy flowers and dim purple silk, seeing it not at all.

He was angry, and of all things in the world that he hated, he hated most to be that.

He had been angry now for several weeks, and, as though it had been a heavy cold that had descended upon him, he woke up every morning expecting to find that his anger had departed--but it had not departed; it showed no signs whatever of departing.

As he sat there he was not thinking of the Jubilee, the one thought at that time of every living soul in Polchester, man, woman and child--he was thinking of no one but Brandon, with whom, to his own deep disgust, he was at last implacably, remorselessly, angry.

How many years ago now he had decided that anger and hatred were emotions that every wise man, at all cost to his pride, his impatience, his self-confidence, avoided.

Everything could be better achieved without these weaknesses, and for many years he had tutored and trained himself until, at last, he had reached this fine height of superiority.

From that height he had suddenly fallen.

It was now three weeks since that luncheon at Carpledon, and in one way or another the quarrel on the road home--the absurd and ludicrous quarrel-- had become known to the whole town.

Had Brandon revealed it?

Or possibly the coachman?

Whoever it was, every one now knew and laughed.

Laughed!

It was that for which Ronder would never forgive Brandon.

The man with his childish temper and monstrous conceit had made him into a ludicrous figure.

It was true that they were laughing, it seemed, more at Brandon than at himself, but the whole scene was farcical.

But beyond this, that incident, trivial though it might be in itself, had thrown the relationship of the two men into dazzling prominence.

It was as though they had been publicly announced as antagonists, and now, stripped and prepared, ringed in by the breathless Town, must vulgarly afford the roughs of the place the fistic exhibition of their lives.

It was the publicity that Ronder detested.

He had not disliked Brandon--he had merely despised him, and he had taken an infinite pleasure in furthering schemes and ambitions, a little underground maybe, but all for the final benefit of the Town.

And now the blundering fool had brought this blaze down upon them, was indeed rushing round and screaming at his antagonist, shouting to any one who would hear that Ronder was a blackguard and a public menace.

It had been whispered--from what source again Ronder did not know--that it was through Ronder's influence that young Falk Brandon had run off to Town with Hogg's daughter.

The boy thought the world of Ronder, it was said, and had been to see him and ask his advice.

Ronder knew that Brandon had heard this story and was publicly declaring that Ronder had ruined his son.

Finally the two men were brought into sharp rivalry over the Pybus living.

Over that, too, the town, or at any rate the Cathedral section of it, was in two camps.

Here, too, Brandon's vociferous publicity had made privacy impossible.

Ronder was ashamed, as though his rotund body had been suddenly exposed in all its obese nakedness before the assembled citizens of Polchester.

In this public quarrel he was not in his element; forces were rising in him that he distrusted and feared.

People were laughing...

for that he would never forgive Brandon so long as he lived.

On this particular afternoon he was about to close the window and try to work at his sermon when some one knocked at his door.

"Come in," he said impatiently.

The maid appeared.

"Please, sir, there's some one would like to speak to you."

"Who is it?"

"She gave her name as Miss Milton, sir."

He paused, looking down at his papers.

"She said she wouldn't keep you more than a moment, sir."

"Very well.

I'll see her."

Fate pushing him again.

Why should this woman come to him?

How could any one say that any of the steps that he had taken in this affair had been his fault?

Why, he had had nothing whatever to do with them!

The sight of Miss Milton in his doorway filled him with the same vague disgust that he had known on the earlier occasions at the Library.

To-day she was wearing a white cotton dress, rather faded and crumpled, and grey silk gloves; in one of the fingers there was a hole.

She carried a pink parasol, and wore a large straw hat overtrimmed with roses.

Her face with its little red-rimmed eyes, freckled and flushed complexion, her clumsy thick-set figure, fitted ill with her youthful dress.

It was obvious enough that fate had not treated her well since her departure from the Library; she was running to seed very swiftly, and was herself bitterly conscious of the fact.

Ronder, looking at her, was aware that it was her own fault that it was so.

She was incompetent, utterly incompetent.

He had, as he had promised, given her some work to do during these last weeks, some copying, some arranging of letters, and she had mismanaged it all.

She was a muddle- headed, ill-educated, careless, conceited and self-opinionated woman, and it did not make it any the pleasanter for Ronder to be aware, as he now was, that Brandon had been quite right to dismiss her from her Library post which she had retained far too long.

She looked across the room at him with an expression of mingled obstinacy and false humility.

Her eyes were nearly closed.

"Good-afternoon, Canon Ronder," she said.

"It is very good of you to see me.

I shall not detain you very long."

"Well, what is it, Miss Milton?"

he said, looking over his shoulder at her.

"I am very busy, as a matter of fact.

All these Jubilee affairs-- however, if I can help you."

"You can help me, sir.

It is a most serious matter, and I need your advice."

"Well, sit down there and tell me about it."

The sun was beating into the room.

He went across and pulled down the blind, partly because it was hot and partly because Miss Milton was less unpleasant in shadow.

Miss Milton seemed to find it hard to begin.

She gulped in her throat and rubbed her silk gloves nervously against one another.

"I daresay I've done wrong in this matter," she began--"many would think so.

But I haven't come here to excuse myself.

If I've done wrong, there are others who have done more wrong--yes, indeed."

"Please come to the point," said Ronder impatiently.

"I will, sir.

That is my desire.

Well, you must know, sir, that after my most unjust dismissal from the Library I took a couple of rooms with Mrs. Bassett who lets rooms, as perhaps you know, sir, just opposite St. James' Rectory, Mr. Morris's." "Well?"

said Ronder.

"Well, sir, I had not been there very long before Mrs. Bassett herself, who is the least interfering and muddling of women, drew my attention to a curious fact, a most curious fact."

Miss Milton paused, looking down at her lap and at a little shabby black bag that lay upon it.

"Well?"

said Ronder again.

"This fact was that Mrs. Brandon, the wife of Archdeacon Brandon, was in the habit of coming every day to see Mr. Morris!"

Ronder got up from his chair.

"Now, Miss Milton," he said, "let me make myself perfectly clear.

If you have come here to give me a lot of scandal about some person, or persons, in this town, I do not wish to hear it.

You have come to the wrong place.

I wonder, indeed, that you should care to acknowledge to any one that you have been spying at your window on the movements of some people here.

That is a disgraceful action.

I do not think there is any need for this conversation to continue."

"Excuse me, Canon Ronder, there _is_ need."

Miss Milton showed no intention whatever of moving from her chair.

"I was aware that you would, in all probability, rebuke me for what I have done.

I expected that.

At the same time I may say that I was _not_ spying in any sense of the word.

I could not help it if the windows of my sitting-room looked down upon Mr. Morris's house.

You could not expect me, in this summer weather, not to sit at my window.

"At the same time, if these visits of Mrs. Brandon's were all that had occurred I should certainly not have come and taken up your valuable time with an account of them; I hope that I know what is due to a gentleman of your position better than that.

It is on a matter of real importance that I have come to you to ask your advice.

Some one's advice I must have, and if you feel that you cannot give it me, I must go elsewhere.

I cannot but feel that it is better for every one concerned that you should have this piece of information rather than any one else."

He noticed how she had grown in firmness and resolve since she had begun to speak.

She now saw her way to the carrying out of her plan.

There was a definite threat in the words of her last sentence, and as she looked at him across the shadowy light he felt as though he saw down into her mean little soul, filled now with hatred and obstinacy and jealous determination.

"Of course," he said severely, "I cannot refuse your confidence if you are determined to give it me."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head.

"You have always been very kind to me, Canon Ronder, as you have been to many others in this place.

Thank you."

She looked at him almost as severely as he had looked at her.

"I will be as brief as possible.

I will not hide from you that I have never forgiven Archdeacon Brandon for his cruel treatment of me.

That, I think, is natural.

When your livelihood is taken away from you for no reason at all, you are not likely to forget it--if you are human.

And I do not pretend to be more nor less than human.

I will not deny that I saw these visits of Mrs. Brandon's with considerable curiosity.

There was something hurried and secret in Mrs. Brandon's manner that seemed to me odd.

I became then, quite by chance, the friend of Mr. Morris's cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Baker, a very nice woman.

That, I think, was quite natural as we were neighbours, so to speak, and Mrs. Baker was herself a friend of Mrs. Bassett's. "I asked no indiscreet questions, but at last Mrs. Baker confessed to both Mrs. Bassett and myself that she did not like what was going on in Mr. Morris's house, and that she thought of giving notice.

When we asked her what she meant she said that Mrs. Brandon was the trouble, that she was always coming to the house, and that she and the reverend gentleman were shut up for hours together by themselves.

She told us, too, that Mr. Morris's sister-in-law, Miss Burnett, had also made objections.

We advised Mrs. Baker that it was her duty to stay, at any rate for the present."

Miss Milton paused.

Ronder said nothing.

"Well, sir, things got so bad that Miss Burnett went away to the sea.

During her absence Mrs. Brandon came to the house quite regularly, and Mrs. Baker told us that they scarcely seemed to mind who saw them."

As Ronder looked at her he realised how little he knew about women.

He hated to realise this, as he hated to realise any ignorance or weakness in himself, but in the face of the woman opposite to him there was a mixture of motives--of greed, revenge, yes, and strangely enough, of a virgin's outraged propriety--that was utterly alien to his experience.

He felt his essential, his almost inhuman, celibacy more at that moment, perhaps, than he had ever felt it before.

"Well, sir, this went on for some weeks.

Miss Burnett returned, but, as Mrs. Baker said, the situation remained very strained.

To come to my point, four days ago I was in one evening paying Mrs. Baker a visit.

Every one was out, although Mr. Morris was expected home for his dinner.

There was a ring at the bell and Mrs. Baker said, 'You go, my dear.'

She was busy at the moment with the cooking.

I went and opened the hall-door and there was Mrs. Brandon's parlourmaid that I knew by sight.

'I have a note for Mr. Morris,' she said.

'You can give it to me,' I said.

She seemed to hesitate, but I told her if she didn't give it to me she might as well take it away again, because there was no one else in the house.

That seemed to settle her, so telling me it was something special, and was to be given to Mr. Morris as soon as possible, she left it with me and went.

She'd never seen me before, I daresay, and didn't know I didn't belong to the house."

She paused, then opening her little eyes wide and staring at Ronder as though she were seeing him for the first time in her life she said softly, "I have the note here."

She opened her black bag slowly, peered into it, produced a piece of paper out of it, and shut it with a sharp little click.

"You've kept it?"

asked Ronder.

"I've kept it," she repeated, nodding her head.

"I know many would say I was wrong.

But was I?

That's the question.

In any case that is another matter between myself and my Maker."

"Please read this, sir?"

She held out the paper to him, He took it and after a moment's hesitation read it.

It had neither date nor address.

It ran as follows: DEAREST--I am sending this by a safe hand to tell you that I cannot possibly get down to-night.

I am so sorry and most dreadfully disappointed, but I will explain everything when we meet to-morrow.

This is to prevent your waiting on when I'm not coming.

There was no signature.

"You had no right to keep this," he said to her angrily.

As he spoke he looked at the piece of paper and felt again how strange and foreign to him the whole nature of woman was.

The risks that they would take!

The foolish mad things that they would do to satisfy some caprice or whim!

"How do you know that this was written by Mrs. Brandon?"

he asked.

"Of course I know her handwriting very well," Miss Milton answered.

"She often wrote to me when I was at the Library."

He was silent.

He was seeing those two in the new light of this letter.

So they were really lovers, the drab, unromantic, plain, dull, middle-aged souls!

What had they seen in one another?

What had they felt, to drive them to deeds so desperate, yes, and so absurd?

Was there then a world right outside his ken, a world from which he had been since his birth excluded?

Absent-mindedly he had put the letter down on his table.

Quickly she stretched out her gloved hand and took it.

The bag clicked over it.

"Why have you brought this to me?"

he asked, looking at her with a disgust that he did not attempt to conceal.

"You are the first person to whom I have spoken about the matter," she answered.

"I have not said anything even to Mrs. Baker.

I have had the letter for several days and have not known what is right to do about it."

"There is only one thing that is right to do about it," he answered sharply.

"Burn it."

"And say nothing to anybody about it?

Oh, Canon Ronder, surely that would not be right.

I should not like people to think that you had given me such advice.

To allow the Rector of St. James' to continue in his position, with so many looking up to him, and he committing such sins.

Oh, no, sir, I cannot feel that to be right!"

"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 passions 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 passions 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.