The Cathedral: A Novel

by Hugh Walpole

He very quickly perceived that the first thing to be done was to establish relations with the men who composed the Chapter. He watched, he listened, he observed, then, at the end of some months, he began to move.

Many men would have considered him lazy. He never took exercise if he could avoid it, and it was Polchester's only fault that it had so many hills. He always had breakfast in bed, read the papers there and smoked a cigarette. Every morning he had a bath as hot as he could bear it--and he could bear it very hot indeed. Much of his best thinking was done there.

When he came downstairs he reserved the first hour for his own reading, reading, that is, that had nothing to do with any kind of work, that was purely for his own pleasure. He allowed nothing whatever to interfere with this--Gautier and Flaubert, La Bruyère and Montaigne were his favourite authors, but he read a great deal of English, Italian, and Spanish, and had a marvelous memory. He enjoyed, too, erotic literature and had a fine collection of erotic books and prints shut away in a cabinet in his study. He found great fascination in theological books: he laughed at many of them, but kept an open mind--atheistic and materialistic dogmas seemed to him as absurd as orthodox ones. He read too a great deal of philosophy but, on the whole, he despised men who gave themselves up to philosophy more than any other human beings. He felt that they lost their sense of humour so quickly, and made life unpleasant for themselves.

After his hour of reading he gave himself up to the work of the day. He was the most methodical of men: the desk in his study was full of little drawers and contrivances for keeping things in order. He had a thin vase of blue glass filled with flowers, a small Chinese image of green jade, a photograph of the Blind Homer from the Naples Museum in a silver frame, and a little gold clock; all these things had to be in their exactly correct positions. Nothing worried him so much as dust or any kind of disorder. He would sometimes stop in the middle of his work and cross the room, in the soft slippers of brown kid that he always wore in his study, and put some picture straight or move some ornament from one position to another. The books that stretched along one wall from floor to ceiling were arranged most carefully according to their subjects. He disliked to see some books projecting further from the shelf than others, and, with a little smile of protest, as though he were giving them a kindly scolding, he would push them into their right places.

Let it not be supposed, however, that he was idle during these hours. He could accomplish an astonishing amount of work in a short time, and he was never idle except by deliberate intention.

When luncheon time arrived he was ready to be charming to his aunt, and charming to her he was. Their relations were excellent. She understood him so well that she left his schemes alone. If she did not entirely approve of him--and she entirely approved of nobody--she loved him for his good company, his humour, and his common-sense. She liked it too that he did not mind when she chose to allow her irony to play upon him. He cared nothing for any irony.

At luncheon they felt a very agreeable intimacy. There was no need for explanations; half allusions were enough. They could enjoy their joke without emphasising it and sometimes even without expressing it. Miss Ronder knew that her nephew liked to hear all the gossip. He collected it, tied it into little packets, and put them away in the little mechanical contrivances with which his mind was filled. She told him first what she heard, then her authorities, finally her own opinions. He thoroughly enjoyed his meal.

He had, by now, very thoroughly mastered the Cathedral finances. They were not complicated and were in good order, because Hart-Smith had been a man of an orderly mind. Ronder very quickly discovered that Brandon had had his fingers considerably in the old pie. "And now there'll be a new pie," he said to himself, "baked by me."...He traced a number of stupid and conservative decisions to Brandon's agency. There was no doubt but that many things needed a new urgency and activity.

People had had to fight desperately for money when they should have been given it at once; on the other hand, the Cathedral had been well looked after--it was rather dependent bodies like the School, the Almshouses, and various livings in the Chapter grant that had suffered.

Anything that could possibly be considered a novelty had been fought and generally defeated. "There will be a lot of novelties before I've finished with them," Ronder said to himself.