"Fit! I like that." The sense that he was alone now for the first time in his life with the man whom he had so long hated infuriated Davray. "Fit? Let me tell you this, old cock, I'm twice as fit to be here as you're ever likely to be. Though I have been drinking and letting myself go, I'm fitter to be here than you are, you stuck-up, pompous fool."
Brandon did not stir.
"Go home!" he said; "go home! Recover your senses and ask God's forgiveness."
"God's forgiveness!" Davray moved a step forward as though he would strike. Brandon made no movement. "That's like your damned cheek. Who wants forgiveness as you do? Ask this Cathedral--ask it whether I have not loved it, adored it, worshipped it as I've worshipped no woman. Ask it whether I have not been faithful, drunkard and sot as I am. And ask it what it thinks of you--of your patronage and pomposity and conceit. When have you thought of the Cathedral and its beauty, and not always of yourself and your grandeur?...Why, man, we're sick of you, all of us from the top man in the place to the smallest boy. And the Cathedral is sick of you and your damned conceit, and is going to get rid of you, too, if you won't go of yourself. And this is the first step. Your son's gone with a whore to London, and all the town's laughing at you."
Brandon did not flinch. The man was close to him; he could smell his drunken breath--but behind his words, drunken though they might be, was a hatred so intense, so deep, so real, that it was like a fierce physical blow. Hatred of himself. He had never conceived in all his life that any one hated him--and this man had hated him for years, a man to whom he had never spoken before to-day.
Davray, as was often his manner, seemed suddenly to sober. He stood aside and spoke more quietly, almost without passion.
"I've been waiting for this moment for years," he said; "you don't know how I've watched you Sunday after Sunday strutting about this lovely place, happy in your own conceit. Your very pride has been an insult to the God you pretend to serve. I don't know whether there's a God or no-- there can't be, or things wouldn't happen as they do--but there is this place, alive, wonderful, beautiful, triumphant, and you've dared to put yourself above it....
"I could have shouted for joy last night when I heard what your young hopeful had done. 'That's right,' I said; 'that'll bring him down a bit. That'll teach him modesty.' I had an extra drink on the strength of it. I've been hanging about all the morning to get a chance of speaking to you. I followed you up here. You're one of us now, Archdeacon. You're down on the ground at last, but not so low as you will be before the Cathedral has finished with you."
"Go," said Brandon, "or, House of God though this is, I'll throw you out."
"I'll go. I've said my say for the moment. But we'll meet again, never fear. You're one of us now--one of us. Good-night."