Cathedral — Bk1 Prelude: Ch 3 One Of Joan's Days
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, superstition to go!"
It was not as conscious as that, but in effect it was that that it came to.
And they were wonderfully assisted by circumstances.
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-à-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 gods and goddesses, 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 class-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 passed, and then one morning she came into the drawing-room and found her mother rather bewildered and distressed.
"Oh dear, I really don't know what to do!"
said her mother.
It was so seldom that Joan was appealed to for advice that her heart now beat with pride.
"What's the matter, mother?"
she asked, trying to look dignified and unconcerned.
Mrs. Brandon looked at her with a frightened and startled look as though she had been speaking to herself and had not wished to be overheard.
"Oh, Joan!...
I didn't know that you were there!"
"What's the matter?
Is it anything I can help about?"
"'No, dear, nothing...
really I didn't know that you were there."
"No, but you must let me help, mother."
Joan marvelled at her own boldness as she spoke.
"It's nothing you can do, dear."
"But it's sure to be something I can do.
Do you know that I've been home for months and months simply with the idea of helping you, and I'm never allowed to do anything?"
"Really, Joan--I don't think that's quite the way to speak."
"No, but, mother, it's true.
I _want_ to help.
I'm grown up.
I'm going to dinner at the Castle, and I _must_ help you, or--or--I shall go away and earn my own living!"
This last was so startling and fantastic that both Joan and her mother stared at one another in a kind of horrified amazement.
"No, I didn't mean that, of course," Joan said, hurriedly recovering herself.
"But you must see that I must have some work to do."
"I don't know what your father would say," said Mrs. Brandon, still bewildered.
"Oh, never mind father," said Joan quickly; "this is a matter just between you and me.
I'm here to help you, and you must let me do something.
Now, what's the trouble to-day?"
"I don't know, dear.
There's no trouble exactly.
Things are so difficult just now.
The fact is that I promised to go to tea with Miss Burnett this afternoon and now your father wants me to go with him to the Deanery.
So provoking!
Miss Burnett caught me in the street, where it's always so difficult to think of excuses."
"Let me go to Miss Burnett's instead," said Joan.
"It's quite time I took on some of the calling for you.
I've never seen Mr. Morris, and I hear he's very nice."
"Very well, dear," said Mrs. Brandon, suddenly beginning, as her way was when there was any real opposition, to capitulate on all sides at once.
"Suppose you do go, dear.
I'm sure it's very kind of you.
And you might take those books back to the Circulating Library as well.
It's Market-Day.
Are you sure you won't mind the horses and cows and dogs?"
Joan laughed.
"I believe you think I'm still five years old, mother.
That's splendid.
I'll start off after lunch."
Joan went up to her room, elated.
Truly, this was a great step forward.
It occurred to her on further reflection that something very serious indeed must be going on behind the scenes to cause her mother to give in so quickly.
She sat on her old faded rocking-chair, her hands crossed behind her head, thinking it all out.
Did she once begin calling on her own account she was grown-up indeed.
What would these Morrises be like?
She found now that she was beginning to be a little frightened.
Mr. Morris was the new Rector of St. James', the little church over by the cattle market.
He had not been in Polchester very long and was said to be a shy timid man, but a good preacher.
He was a widower, and his sister-in-law kept house for him.
Joan considered further on the great importance of these concessions; it made all the difference to everything.
She was now to have a life of her own, and every kind of adventure and romance was possible for her.
She was suddenly so happy that she sprang up and did a little dance round her room, a sort of polka, that became so vehement that the pictures and the little rickety table rattled.
"I'll be so grown-up at the Morrises' this afternoon that they'll think I've been calling for years," she said to herself.
She had need of all her courage and optimism at luncheon, for it was a gloomy meal.
Only her father and mother were present.
They were all very silent.
After lunch she went upstairs, put on her hat and coat, picked up the three Library books, and started off.
It was a sunny day, with shadows chasing one another across the Cathedral green.
There was, as there so often is in Polchester, a smell of the sea in the air, cold and invigorating.
She paused for a moment and looked across at the Cathedral.
She did not know why, but she had been always afraid of the Cathedral.
She had never loved it, and had always wished that they could go on Sundays to some little church like St. James'.
For most of her conscious life the Cathedral had hung over her with its dark menacing shadow, forbidding her, as it seemed to her, to be gay or happy or careless.
To-day the thought suddenly came to her, "That place is going to do us harm.
I hate it," and for a moment she was depressed and uneasy; but when she came out from the Arden Gate and saw the High Street all shining with the sun, running down the hill into glittering distance, she was gloriously cheerful once more.
There the second wonderful thing that day happened to her.
She had taken scarcely a step down the hill when she came upon Mrs. Sampson.
There was nothing wonderful about that; Mrs. Sampson, being the wife of a Dean who was much more retiring than he should be, was to be seen in public at all times and seasons, having to do, as it were, the work of two rather than one.
No, the wonderful thing was that Joan suddenly realised that her terror of Mrs. Sampson--a terror that had always been a real thorn in her flesh--was completely gone.
It was as though a charm, an Abracadabra, had been whispered over Mrs. Sampson and she had been changed immediately into a rabbit.
It had never been Mrs. Sampson's fault that she was alarming to the young.
She was a good woman, but she was cursed with two sad burdens--a desperate shyness and a series, unrelenting, unmitigating, mysterious, desperate, of nervous headaches.
Her headaches were a feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies.
But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs. Sampson's sharpness of manner, her terrifying habit of rapping out a "Yes" or a "No," her gloomy view of boisterous habits and healthy appetites, made her one most truly to be avoided.
Before to-day Joan would have willingly walked a mile out of her way to escape her; to-day she only saw a nervous, pale-faced little woman in an ill-fitting blue dress, for whom she could not be anything but sorry.
"Good morning, Mrs. Sampson."
"Good morning, Joan."
"Isn't it a nice day?"
"It's cold, I think.
Is your mother well?"
"Very well, thank you."
"Give her my love."
"I will, Mrs. Sampson."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
Mrs. Sampson's nose, that would take on a blue colour on a cold day, quivered, her thin mouth shut with a snap, and she was gone.
"But I wasn't afraid of her!"
She was almost frightened at this new spirit that had come to her, and, feeling rather that in another moment she would be punished for her piratical audacity, she turned up the steps into the Circulating Library.
It was the custom in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs.
Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings.
She hated children, myself in particular.
She was also a Snob of the Snobs, and thanked God on her knees every night for Lady St. Leath, Mrs. Combermere and Mrs. Sampson, by whose graces she was left in her present position.
Joan was still too near childhood to be considered very seriously, and it was well known that her father did not take her very seriously either.
She was always, therefore, on the rare occasions when she entered the Library, snubbed by Miss Milton.
It must be confessed that to-day, in spite of her success with Mrs. Sampson, she was nervous.
She was nervous partly because she hated Miss Milton's red-rimmed eyes, and never looked at them if she could help it, but, in the main, because she knew that her mother was returning the Library books too quickly, and had, moreover, insisted that she should ask for Mr. Barrie's _Sentimental Tommy_ and Mr. Seton Merriman's _The Sowers_, both of them books that had been asked for for weeks and as steadily and persistently refused.
Joan knew what Miss Milton would say, "That they might be in next week, but that she couldn't be sure."
Was Joan strong enough now, in her new- found glory, to fight for them?
She did not know.
She advanced to the table smiling.
Miss Milton did not look up, but continued to knit one of her horrible stockings.
"Good-morning, Miss Milton.
Mother has sent back these books.
They were not quite what she wanted."
"I'm sorry for that."
Miss Milton took the books into her chilblained protection.
"It's a little difficult, I must say, to know what Mrs. Brandon prefers."
"Well, there's _Sentimental Tommy_," began Joan.
But Miss Milton was an old general.
"Oh, that's out, I'm afraid.
Now, here's a sweetly pretty book--_Roger Varibrugh's Wife_, by Adeline Sergeant.
It'a only just out...."
"Or there's _The Sowers,"_ said Joan, caught against her will by the red-rimmed eyes and staring at them.
"Oh, that's out, I'm afraid.
There are several books here--" "You promised mother," said Joan, "that she should have _Sentimental Tommy_ this week.
You promised her a month ago.
It's about time that mother had a book that she cares for."
"Really," said Miss Milton, wide-eyed at Joan's audacity.
"You seem to be charging me with some remissness, Miss Brandon.
If you have any complaint, I'm sure the Library Committee will attend to it.
It's to them I have to answer.
When the book is in you shall have it.
I can promise no more.
I am only human."
"You have said that now for three months," said Joan, beginning, to her own surprised delight, to be angry.
"Surely the last reader hasn't been three months over it.
I thought subscribers were only allowed to keep a book a week."
Miss Milton's crimson colouring turned to a deep purple.
"The book is out," she said.
"Both books are out.
They are in great demand.
I have no more to say."
The Library door opened, and a young man came in.
Joan was still too young to wish for scenes in public.
She must give up the battle for to-day.
When, however, she saw who it was she blushed.
It was young Lord St. Leath --Johnny St. Leath, as he was known to his familiars, who were many and of all sorts and conditions.
Joan hated herself for blushing, especially before the odious Miss Milton, but there was a reason.
One day in last October after morning service Joan and her mother had waited in the Cloisters to avoid a shower of rain.
St. Leath had also waited and very pleasantly had talked to them both.
There was nothing very alarming in this, but as the rain cleared and Mrs. Brandon had moved forward across the Green, he had suddenly, with a confusion that had seemed to her charming, asked Joan whether one day they mightn't meet again.
He had given her one look straight in the eyes, tried to say something more, failed, and turned away down the Cloisters.
Joan had never before been asked by any young man to meet him again.
She had told herself that this was nothing but the merest, most obvious politeness; nevertheless the look that he had given her remained.
Now, as she saw him advancing towards her, there was the thought, was it not on that very morning that her new courage and self-confidence had come to her?
The thought was so absurd that she flung it at Miss Milton.
But the blush remained.
Johnny was an ungainly young man, with a red face, freckles, a large mouth, and a bull-terrier--a conventional British type, I suppose, saved, nevertheless, from conventionality by his affection for his three plain sisters, his determination to see things as they were, and his sense of humour, the last of these something quite his own, and always appearing in unexpected places.
The bull-terrier, in spite of the notice on the Library door that no dogs were admitted, advanced breathlessly and dribbling with excitement for Miss Milton's large black felt slippers.
"Here, Andrew, old man.
Heel!
Heel!"
said Johnny.
Andrew, however, quite naturally concluded that this was only an approval of his intentions, and there might have followed an awkward scene had his master not caught him by the collar and held him suspended in mid-air, to his own indignant surprise and astonishment.
Joan laughed, and Miss Milton, quivering between indignation, fear and snobbery, dropped the stocking that she was knitting.
Andrew burst from his master's clutches, rushed the stocking into the farthest recesses of the Library, and proceeded there to enjoy it.
Johnny apologised.
"Oh, it's quite all right, Lord St. Leath," said Miss Milton.
"What a fine animal!"
"Yes, he is," said Johnny, rescuing the stocking.
"He's as strong as Lucifer.
Here, Andrew, you devil, I'll break every bone in your body."
During this little scene Johnny had smiled at Joan, and in so pleasant a way that she was compelled to smile back at him.
"How do you do, Miss Brandon?"
He had recalled Andrew now, and the dog was slobbering happily at his feet.
"Jolly day, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Joan, and stood there awkwardly, feeling that she ought to go but not knowing quite how to do so.
He also seemed embarrassed, and turned abruptly to Miss Milton.
"I say, look here....
Mother asked me to come in and get that book you promised her.
What's the name of the thing?...
I've got it written down."
He fumbled in his pocket and produced a bit of paper.
"Here it is.
_Sentimental Tommy_, by a man called Barrie.
Silly name, but mother's always reading the most awful stuff."
Joan turned towards Miss Milton.
"How funny!"
she said.
"That's the book I've just been asking for.
It's out."
Miss Milton's face was a curious purple.
"Well, that's odd," said Johnny.
"Mother told me that you'd sent her a line to say it was in whenever she sent for it."
"It's been out three months," said Joan, staring now straight into Miss Milton's angry eyes.
"I've been keeping..."
said Miss Milton.
"That is, there's a special copy....
Lady St. Leath specially asked----" "Is it in, or isn't it?"
asked Johnny.
"There _is_ a copy, Lord St. Leath----" With confused fingers Miss Milton searched in a drawer.
She produced the book.
"You told me," said Joan, forgetting now in her anger St. Leath and all the world, "that there wouldn't he a copy for weeks.
If you'd told me you were keeping one for St. Leath, that would have been different.
You shouldn't have told me a lie."
"Do you mean to say," said Johnny, opening his eyes very widely indeed, "that you refused this copy to Miss Brandon?"
"Certainly," said Miss Milton, breathing very hard as though she had been running a long distance.
"I was keeping it for your mother."
"Well, I'm damned," said Johnny.
"I beg your pardon, Miss Brandon,...
but I never heard such a thing.
Does my mother pay a larger subscription than other people?"
"Certainly not."
"Then what right had you to tell Miss Brandon a lie?"
Miss Milton, in spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears--also murder.
She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy.
She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets.
She saw...
but never mind her visions.
They were terrible ones.
She had recourse to her only defence.
"If I have misunderstood my duty," she said in a trembling voice, "there is the Library Committee."
"Oh, never mind," said Joan whose anger had disappeared.
"It doesn't matter a bit.
We'll have the book after Lady St. Leath."
"Indeed you won't," said Johnny, seizing the volume and forcing it upon Joan.
"Mother can wait.
I never heard of such a thing."
He turned fiercely upon Miss Milton.
"My mother shall know exactly what has happened.
I'm sure she'd be horrified if she understood that you were keeping books from other subscribers in order that she might have them....
Good afternoon."
He strode from the room.
At the door he paused.
"Can I--Shall we--Are you going down the High Street, Miss Brandon?"
"Yes," said Joan.
They went out of the room and down the Library steps together.
In the shiny, sunny street they paused.
The dark cobwebs of the Library hung behind Joan's consciousness like the sudden breaking of a mischievous spell.
She was so happy that she could have embraced Andrew, who was, however, already occupied with the distant aura of a white poodle on the other side of the street.
Johnny was driven by the impulse of his indignation down the hill.
Joan, rather breathlessly, followed him.
"I say!"
said Johnny.
"Did you ever hear of such a woman!
She ought to be poisoned.
She ought indeed.
No, poisoning's too good for her.
Hung, drawn and quartered.
That's what she ought to be.
She'll get into trouble over that."
"Oh no," said Joan.
"Please, Lord St. Leath, don't say any more about it.
She has a difficult time, I expect, everybody wanting the same books.
After all a promise is a promise."
"But she'd promised your mother----" "No, she never really did.
She always said that it would be in in a day or two.
She never properly promised.
I expect we'd have had it next."
"The snob, the rotten snob!"
Johnny paused and raised his stick.
"I hate women like that.
No, she's not doing her job properly.
She oughtn't to be there."
So swift had been their descent that they arrived in a moment at the market.
Because to-day was market-day there was a fine noise, confusion and splendour--carts rattling in and out, sheep and cows driven hither and thither, the wooden stalls bright with flowers and vegetables, the dim arcades looming behind the square filled with mysterious riches.
They could not talk very much here, and Joan was glad.
