The Cathedral: A Novel

by Hugh Walpole

Every one has, at one time or another, known the experience of watching some friend or acquaintance moved suddenly from the ordinary atmosphere of every day into some dramatic region of crisis where he becomes, for a moment, far more than life-size in his struggle against the elements; he is lifted, like Siegmund in The Valkyrie, into the clouds for his last and most desperate duel.

There was something of this feeling in the attitude taken in our town after the Jubilee towards Archdeacon Brandon. As Miss Stiles said (not meaning it at all unkindly), it really was very fortunate for everybody that the town had the excitement of the Pybus appointment to follow immediately the Jubilee drama; had it not been so, how flat would every one have been! And by the Pybus appointment she meant, of course, the Decline and Fall of Archdeacon Brandon, and the issue of his contest with delightful, clever Canon Ronder.

The disappearance of Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris would have been excitement enough quite by itself for any one year. As every one said, the wives of Archdeacons simply did not run away with the clergymen of their town. It was not done. It had never, within any one's living memory, been done before, whether in Polchester or anywhere else.

Clergymen were, of course, only human like any one else, and so were their wives, but at least they did not make a public declaration of their failings; they remembered their positions, who they were and what they were.

In one sense there had been no public declaration. Mrs. Brandon had gone up to London to see about some business, and Mr. Morris also happened to be away, and his sister-in-law was living on in the Rectory exactly as though nothing had occurred. However, that disguise could not hold for long, and every one knew exactly what had happened--well, if not exactly, every one had a very good individual version of the whole story.

And through it all, above it, behind it and beyond it, towered the figure of the Archdeacon. He was the question, he the centre of the drama. There were a hundred different stories running around the town as to what exactly had happened to him during those Jubilee days. Was it true that he had taken Miss Milton by the scruff of her long neck and thrown her out of the house? Was it true that he had taken his coat off in the Cloisters and given Ronder two black eyes? (The only drawback to this story was that Ronder showed no sign of bruises.) Had he and Mrs. Brandon fought up and down the house for the whole of a night, Joan assisting? And, above all, what occurred at the Jubilee Fair? Had Brandon been set upon by a lot of ruffians? Was it true that Samuel Hogg had revenged himself for his daughter's abduction? No one knew. No one knew anything at all. The only certain thing was that the Archdeacon had a bruise on his temple and a scratch on his cheek, and that he was "queer," oh, yes, very queer indeed!

It was finally about this "queerness" that the gossip of the town most persistently clung. Many people said that they had watched him "going queer" for a long while back, entirely forgetting that only a year ago he had been the most vigorous, healthiest, sanest man in the place. Old Puddifoot, with all sorts of nods, winks and murmurs, alluded to mysterious medical secrets, and "how much he could tell an' he would," and that "he had said years ago about Brandon...." Well, never mind what he had said, but it was all turning out exactly as, for years, he had expected.

Nothing is stranger (and perhaps more fortunate) than the speed with which the past is forgotten. Brandon might have been all his days the odd, muttering, eye-wandering figure that he now appeared. Where was the Viking now? Where the finest specimen of physical health in all Glebeshire? Where the King and Crowned Monarch of Polchester?

In the dust and debris of the broken past. "Poor old Archdeacon." "A bit queer in the upper storey." "Not to be wondered at after all the trouble he's had." "They break up quickly, those strong-looking men." "Bit too pleased with himself, he was." "Ah, well, he's served his time; what we need are more modern men. You can't deny that he was old-fashioned."

People were not altogether to be blamed for this sudden sense that they were stepping into a new period, out of one room into another, so to speak. The Jubilee was responsible for that. It did mark a period, and looking back now after all these years one can see that that impression was a true one. The Jubilee of '97, the Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria--the end of the Victorian Era for Church as well as for State.