The Cathedral: A Novel

by Hugh Walpole

Now she put the whole of that aside and concentrated on her father. Watching him during dinner, he seemed to her suddenly to have become older; there was a glow in her heart as she thought that at last he really needed her. After all, if through life she were destined to be an old maid--and that, in the tragic moment of her youth that was now upon her, seemed her inevitable destiny--here was some one for whom at last she could care. She had felt before she came down to dinner that she was old and ugly and desperately unattractive. Across the dinner-table she flung away, as she imagined for ever, all hopes for beauty and charm; she would love her father and he should love her, and every other man in the world might vanish for all that she cared. And had she only known it, she had never before looked so pretty as she did that night. This also she did not know, that her mother, catching a sudden picture of her under the candle-light, felt a deep pang of almost agonising envy. She, making her last desperate bid for love, was old and haggard; the years for her could only add to that age. Her gambler's throw was foredoomed before she had made it.

After dinner, Brandon, as always, retired into the deepest chair in the drawing-room and buried himself in yesterday's Times. He read a little, but the words meant nothing to him. Jubilee! Jubilee! Jubilee! He was sick of the word. Surely they were overdoing it. When the great day itself came every one would be so tired....

He pushed the paper aside and picked up Punch. Here, again, that eternal word--"How to see the Procession. By one who has thought it out. Of course you must be out early. As the traffic...."

JOKE--Jinks: Don't meet you 'ere so often as we used to, Binks, eh?

Binks: Well--no. It don't run to Hopera Box this Season, because, you see, we've took a Window for this 'ere Jubilee.

Then, on one page, "The Walrus and the Carpenter: Jubilee Version." "In Anticipation of the Naval Review." "Two Jubilees?" On the next page an illustration of the Jubilee Walrus. On the next--"Oh, the Jubilee!" On the next, Toby M.P.'s "Essence of Parliament," with a "Reed" drawing of "A Naval Field Battery for the Jubilee."

The paper fell from his hand. During these last days he had had no time to read the paper, and he had fancied, as perhaps every Polcastrian was just then fancying, that the Jubilee was a private affair for Polchester's own private benefit. He felt suddenly that Polchester was a small out-of-the- way place of no account; was there any one in the world who cared whether Polchester celebrated the Jubilee or not? Nobody....

He got up and walked across to the window, pulling the curtains aside and looking out at the deep purple dusk that stained the air like wine. The clock behind him struck a quarter past nine. Two tiny stars, like inquisitive mocking eyes, winked at him above the high Western tower. Moved by an impulse that was too immediate and peremptory to be investigated, he went into the hall, found his hat and stick, opened softly the door as though he were afraid that some one would try to stop him, and was soon on the grass in front of the Cathedral, staring about him as though he had awakened from a bewildering dream.

He went across to the little side-door, found his key, and entered the Cathedral, leaving the gargoyle to grin after him, growing more alive, and more malicious too, with every fading moment of the light.

Within the Cathedral there was a strange shadowy glow as though behind the thick cold pillars lights were burning. He found his way, stumbling over the cane-bottomed chairs that were piled in measured heaps in the side aisle, into the nave. Even he, used to it as he had been for so many years, was thrilled to-night. There was a movement of preparation abroad; through all the stillness there was the stir of life. It seemed to him that the armoured knights and the high-bosomed ladies, and the little cupids with their pursed lips and puffing cheeks, and the angels with their too solid wings were watching him and breathing round him as he passed. Late though it was, a dim light from the great East window fell in broad slabs of purple and green shadow across the grey; everything was indistinct; only the white marble of the Reredos was like a figured sheet hanging from wall to wall, and the gilded trumpets of the angels on the choir-screen stood out dimly like spider pattern. He felt a longing that the place should return his love and tenderness. The passion of his life was here; he knew to-night, as he had never before, the life of its own that this place had, and as he stayed there, motionless in the centre of the nave, some doubt stole into his heart as to whether, after all, he and it were one and indivisible, as for so long he had believed. Take this away, and what was left to him? His son had gone, his wife and daughter were strange to him; if this, too, went....