The Cathedral: A Novel

by Hugh Walpole

She seemed for a little distracted. She could not think. Her thoughts would not come clearly. She waited, staring into the sun and the colour. Quietness came to her. Her life was now his. Nothing counted in her life but that. If they must leave Polchester she would go with him wherever he must go, and care for him. Johnny! For one terrible instant he seemed to stand, a figure of flame, outside there on the sun-drenched grass.

Outside! Yes, always outside, until her father did not need her any more. Then, suddenly she wanted Johnny so badly that she crumpled up into one of the old arm-chairs and cried and cried and cried. She was very young. Life ahead of her seemed very long. Yes, she cried her heart out, and then she went upstairs and washed her face and wrote to Falk. She would not telegraph until she was quite sure that she could not manage it by herself.

The wonderful morning changed to a storm of wind and rain. Such a storm! Down in the basement Cook could scarcely hear herself speak! As she said to Gladys, it was what you must expect now. They were slipping into Autumn, and before you knew, why, there would be Winter! Nothing odder than the sudden way the Seasons took you! But Cook didn't like storms in that house. "Them Precincts 'ouses, they're that old, they'd fall on top of you as soon as whistle Trefusis! For her part she'd always thought this 'ouse queer, and it wasn't any the less queer since all these things had been going on in it." It was at this point that the grocery "boy" arrived and supposed they'd 'eard all about it by that time. All about what? Why, the Archdeacon knocking Samuel 'Ogg down in the 'Igh Street that very morning! Then, indeed, you could have knocked Cook down, as she said, with a whisper. Collapsed her so, that she had to sit down and take a cup of tea, the kettle being luckily on the boil. Gladys had to sit down and take one too, and there they sat, the grocer's boy dismissed, in the darkening kitchen, their heads close together, and starting at every hiss of the rain upon the coals. The house hung heavy and dark above them. Mad, that's what he must be, and going mad these past ever so many months. And such a fine man too! But knocking people down in the street, and 'im such a man for his own dignity! 'Im an Archdeacon too. 'Ad any one ever heard in their lives of an Archdeacon doing such a thing? Well, that settled Cook. She'd been in the house ten solid years, but at the end of the month she'd be off. To sit in the house with a madman! Not she! Adultery and all the talk had been enough, but she had risked her good name and all, just for the sake of that poor young thing upstairs, but madness!--no, that was another pair of shoes.

Now Gladys was peculiar. She'd given her notice, but hearing this, she suddenly determined to stay. That poor Miss Joan! Poor little worm! So young and innocent--shut up all alone with her mad father. Gladys would see her through--

"Why, Gladys," cried Cook, "what will your young feller you're walkin' with say?"

"If 'e don't like it 'e can lump it," said Gladys. "Lord, 'ow this house does rattle!"

All the afternoon of that day Brandon sat, never moving from his study- table. He sat exultant. Some of the shame had been wiped away. He could feel again the riotous happiness that had surged up in him as he struck that face, felt it yield before him, saw it fade away into dust and nothingness. That face that had for all these months been haunting him, at last he had banished it, and with it had gone those other leering faces that had for so long kept him company. His room was dark, and it was always in the dark that they came to him--Hogg's, the drunken painter's, that old woman's in the dirty dress.

And to-day they did not come. If they came he would treat them as he had treated Hogg. That was the way to deal with them!

His heart was bad, fluttering, stampeding, pounding and then dying away. He walked about the room that he might think less of it. Never mind his heart! Destroy his enemies, that's what he had to do--these men and women who were the enemies of himself, his town and his Cathedral.

Suddenly he thought that he would go out. He got his hat and his coat and went into the rain. He crossed the Green and let himself into the Cathedral by the Saint Margaret Chapel door, as he had so often done before.