The Cathedral: A Novel

by Hugh Walpole

The Canon himself accompanied his guest into the hall and opened the front door for him.

"Any time--any time--that I can help you."

"Thank you so very much. Good-bye."

"Good-bye. Good-bye."

So far so good, but Ronder was aware that his next visit would be quite another affair--and so indeed it proved.

To reach Canon's Yard from Orange Street, Ronder had to go down through Green Lane past the Orchards, and up by a steep path into Bodger's Street and the small houses that have clustered for many years behind the Cathedral. Here once was Saint Margaret's Monastery utterly swept away, until not a stone remained, by Henry VIII.'s servants. Saint Margaret's only memory lingers in the Saint Margaret's Hostel for Women at the top of Bodger's Street, and even that has now a worn and desolate air as though it also were on the edge of departure. In truth, this part of Polchester is neglected and forgotten; it has not sunk like Seatown into dirt and degradation, it has still an air of romance and colour, but the life is gone from it.

Canon's Yard is behind the Hostel and is a little square, shut-in, cobbled place with tall thin houses closing it in and the Cathedral towers overhanging it. Rooks and bells and the rattle of carts upon the cobbles make a perpetual clatter here, and its atmosphere is stuffy and begrimed. When the Cathedral chimes ring they echo from house to house, from wall to wall, so that it seems as though the bells of a hundred Cathedrals were ringing here. Nevertheless from the high windows of the Yard there is a fine view of orchards and hills and distant woods--a view not to be despised.

The house in which Canon Foster had his rooms is one of the oldest of all the houses. The house was kept by one Mrs. Maddis, who had "run" rooms for the clergy ever since her first marriage, when she was a pretty blushing girl of twenty. She was now a hideous old woman of eighty, and the house was managed by her married daughter, Mrs. Crumpleton. There were three floors and there should have been three clergymen, but for some time the bottom floor had been empty and the middle apartments were let to transient tenants. They were at this moment inhabited by a retired sea- captain.

Foster reigned on the top floor and was quite oblivious of neighbours, landladies, tidiness, and the view--he cared, by nature, for none of these things. Ronder climbed up the dirty dark staircase and knocked on the old oak door that had upon it a dirty visiting card with Foster's name. When he ceased his climb and the noise of his footsteps fell away there was a great silence. Not a sound could be heard. The bells were not chiming, the rooks were not cawing (it was not as yet their time) nor was the voice of Mrs. Crumpleton to be heard, shrill and defiant, as was too often the case. The house was dead; the town was dead; had the world itself suddenly died, like a candle whose light is put out, Foster would not have cared.

Ronder knocked three times with the knob of his walking-stick. The man must be out. He was about to turn away and go when the door suddenly opened, as though by a secret life of its own, and the pale face and untidy person of the Canon, like the apparition of a surprised and indignant revenant, was apparent.