The Cathedral

A Novel

BY

Hugh Walpole

Author of The Young Enchanted, The Captives,
Jeremy, The Secret City,
The Green Mirror, etc.

To
Jessie and Joseph Conrad
With Much Love

Contents

[Book I: Prelude]

1. [Brandons]
2. [Ronders]
3. [One of Joan's Days]
4. [The Impertinent Elephan]
5. [Mrs. Brandon Goes Out to Tea]
6. [Seatown Mist and Cathedral Dust]
7. [Ronder's Day]
8. [Son--Father]

[Book II: The Whispering Gallery]

1. [Five O'Clock--The Green Cloud]
2. [Souls on Sunday]
3. [The May-Day Prologue]
4. [The Genial Heart]
5. [Falk by the River]
6. [Falk's Flight]
7. [Brandon Puts On His Armour]
8. [The Wind Flies Over the House]
9. [The Quarrel]

[Book III: The Jubilee]

1. [June 17, Thursday: Anticipation]
2. [Friday, June 18: Shadow Meets Shadow]
3. [Saturday, June 19: The Ball]
4. [Sunday, June 20: In the Bedroom]
5. [Tuesday, June 22: I. The Cathedral]
6. [Tuesday, June 22: II. The Fair]
7. [Tuesday, June 22: III. Torchlight]

[Book IV: The Last Stand]

1. [In Ronder's House: Ronder, Wistons]
2. [Two in the House]
3. [Prelude to Battle]
4. [The Last Tournament]

Book I

Prelude

"Thou shalt have none other gods but Me."

Chapter I

Brandons

Adam Brandon was born at Little Empton in Kent in 1839. He was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Ordained in 1863, he was first curate at St. Martin's, Portsmouth, then Chaplain to the Bishop of Worcester; in the year 1875 he accepted the living of Pomfret in Wiltshire and was there for twelve years. It was in 1887 that he came to our town; he was first Canon and afterwards Archdeacon. Ten years later he had, by personal influence and strength of character, acquired so striking a position amongst us that he was often alluded to as "the King of Polchester." His power was the greater because both our Bishop (Bishop Purcell) and our Dean (Dean Sampson) during that period were men of retiring habits of life. A better man, a greater saint than Bishop Purcell has never lived, but in 1896 he was eighty-six years of age and preferred study and the sanctity of his wonderful library at Carpledon to the publicity and turmoil of a public career; Dean Sampson, gentle and amiable as he was, was not intended by nature for a moulder of men. He was, however, one of the best botanists in the County and his little book on "Glebshire Ferns" is, I believe, an authority in its own line.

Archdeacon Brandon was, of course, greatly helped by his magnificent physical presence. "Magnificent" is not, I think, too strong a word. Six feet two or three in height, he had the figure of an athlete, light blue eyes, and his hair was still, when he was fifty-eight years of age, thick and fair and curly like that of a boy. He looked, indeed, marvellously young, and his energy and grace of movement might indeed have belonged to a youth still in his teens. It is not difficult to imagine how startling an effect his first appearance in Polchester created. Many of the Polchester ladies thought that he was like "a Greek God" (the fact that they had never seen one gave them the greater confidence), and Miss Dobell, who was the best read of all the ladies in our town, called him "the Viking." This stuck to him, being an easy and emphatic word and pleasantly cultured.

Indeed, had Brandon come to Polchester as a single man there might have been many broken hearts; however, in 1875 he had married Amy Broughton, then a young girl of twenty. He had by her two children, a boy, Falcon, now twenty-one years of age, and a girl, Joan, just eighteen. Brandon therefore was safe from the feminine Polchester world; our town is famous among Cathedral cities for the morality of its upper classes.

It would not have been possible during all these years for Brandon to have remained unconscious of the remarkable splendour of his good looks. He was very well aware of it, but any one who called him conceited (and every one has his enemies) did him a grave injustice. He was not conceited at all-- he simply regarded himself as a completely exceptional person. He was not elated that he was exceptional, he did not flatter himself because it was so; God had seen fit (in a moment of boredom, perhaps, at the number of insignificant and misshaped human beings He was forced to create) to fling into the world, for once, a truly Fine Specimen, Fine in Body, Fine in Soul, Fine in Intellect. Brandon had none of the sublime egoism of Sir Willoughby Patterne--he thought of others and was kindly and often unselfish--but he did, like Sir Willoughby, believe himself to be of quite another clay from the rest of mankind. He was intended to rule, God had put him into the world for that purpose, and rule he would--to the glory of God and a little, if it must be so, to the glory of himself. He was a very simple person, as indeed were most of the men and women in the Polchester of 1897. He did not analyse motives, whether his own or any one else's; he was aware that he had "weaknesses" (his ungovernable temper was a source of real distress to him at times--at other times he felt that it had its uses). On the whole, however, he was satisfied with himself, his appearance, his abilities, his wife, his family, and, above all, his position in Polchester. This last was very splendid.

His position in the Cathedral, in the Precincts, in the Chapter, in the Town, was unshakable.

He trusted in God, of course, but, like a wise man, he trusted also in himself.

It happened that on a certain wild and stormy afternoon in October 1896 Brandon was filled with a great exultation. As he stood, for a moment, at the door of his house in the Precincts before crossing the Green to the Cathedral, he looked up at the sky obscured with flying wrack of cloud, felt the rain drive across his face, heard the elms in the neighbouring garden creaking and groaning, saw the lights of the town far beneath the low wall that bounded the Precincts sway and blink in the storm, his heart beat with such pride and happiness that it threatened to burst the body that contained it. There had not been, perhaps, that day anything especially magnificent to elate him; he had won, at the Chapter Meeting that morning, a cheap and easy victory over Canon Foster, the only Canon in Polchester who still showed, at times, a wretched pugnacious resistance to his opinion; he had met Mrs. Combermere afterwards in the High Street and, on the strength of his Chapter victory, had dealt with her haughtily; he had received an especially kind note from Lady St. Leath asking him to dinner early next month; but all these events were of too usual a nature to excite his triumph.

No, there had descended upon him this afternoon that especial ecstasy that is surrendered once and again by the gods to men to lead them, maybe, into some especial blunder or to sharpen, for Olympian humour, the contrast of some swiftly approaching anguish.

Brandon stood for a moment, his head raised, his chest out, his soul in flight, feeling the sharp sting of the raindrops upon his cheek; then, with a little breath of pleasure and happiness, he crossed the Green to the little dark door of Saint Margaret's Chapel.

The Cathedral hung over him, as he stood, feeling in his pocket for his key, a huge black shadow, vast indeed to-day, as it mingled with the grey sky and seemed to be taking part in the directing of the wildness of the storm. Two little gargoyles, perched on the porch of Saint Margaret's door, leered down upon the Archdeacon. The rain trickled down over their naked twisted bodies, running in rivulets behind their outstanding ears, lodging for a moment on the projection of their hideous nether lips. They grinned down upon the Archdeacon, amused that he should have difficulty, there in the rain, in finding his key. "Pah!" they heard him mutter, and then, perhaps, something worse. The key was found, and he had then to bend his great height to squeeze through the little door. Once inside, he was at the corner of the Saint Margaret Chapel and could see, in the faint half-light, the rosy colours of the beautiful Saint Margaret window that glimmered ever so dimly upon the rows of cane-bottomed chairs, the dingy red hassocks, and the brass tablets upon the grey stone walls. He walked through, picking his way carefully in the dusk, saw for an instant the high, vast expanse of the nave with its few twinkling lights that blew in the windy air, then turned to the left into the Vestry, closing the door behind him. Even as he closed the door he could hear high, high up above him the ringing of the bell for Evensong.

In the Vestry he found Canon Dobell and Canon Rogers. Dobell, the Minor Canon who was singing the service, was a short, round, chubby clergyman, thirty-eight years of age, whose great aim in life was to have an easy time and agree with every one. He lived with a sister in a little house in the Precincts and gave excellent dinners. Very different was Canon Rogers, a thin esthetic man with black bushy eyebrows, a slight stoop and thin brown hair. He took life with grim seriousness. He was a stupid man but obstinate, dogmatic, and given to the condemnation of his fellow-men. He hated innovations as strongly as the Archdeacon himself, but with his clinging to old forms and rituals there went no self-exaltation. He was a cold-blooded man, although his obstinacy seemed sometimes to point to a fiery fanaticism. But he was not a fanatic any more than a mule is one when he plants his feet four-square and refuses to go forward. No compliments nor threats could move him; he would have lived, had he had a spark of asceticism, a hermit far from the haunts of men, but even that withdrawal would have implied devotion. He was devoted to no one, to no cause, to no religion, to no ambition. He spent his days in maintaining things as they were, not because he loved them, simply because he was obstinate. Brandon quite frankly hated him.

In the farther room the choir-boys were standing in their surplices, whispering and giggling. The sound of the bell was suddenly emphatic. Canon Rogers stood, his hands folded motionless, gazing in front of him. Dobell, smiling so that a dimple appeared in each cheek, said in his chuckling whisper to Brandon:

"Ronder comes to-day, doesn't he?"

"Ronder?" Brandon repeated, coming abruptly out of his secret exultation.

"Yes...Hart-Smith's successor."

"Oh, yes--I believe he does...."

Cobbett, the Verger, with his gold staff, appeared in the Vestry door. A tall handsome man, he had been in the service of the Cathedral as man and boy for fifty years. He had his private ambitions, the main one being that old Lawrence, the head Verger, in his opinion a silly old fool, should die and permit his own legitimate succession. Another ambition was that he should save enough money to buy another three cottages down in Seatown. He owned already six there. But no one observing his magnificent impassivity (he was famous for this throughout ecclesiastical Glebeshire) would have supposed that he had any thought other than those connected with ceremony. As he appeared the organ began its voluntary, the music stealing through the thick grey walls, creeping past the stout grey pillars that had listened, with so impervious an immobility, to an endless succession of voluntaries. The Archdeacon prayed, the choir responded with a long Amen, and the procession filed out, the boys with faces pious and wistful, the choir-men moving with nonchalance, their restless eyes wandering over the scene so absolutely known to them. Then came Rogers like a martyr; Dobell gaily as though he were enjoying some little joke of his own; last of all, Brandon, superb in carriage, in dignity, in his magnificent recognition of the value of ceremony.

Because to-day was simply an ordinary afternoon with an ordinary Anthem and an ordinary service (Martin in F) the congregation was small, the gates of the great screen closed with a clang behind the choir, and the nave, purple grey under the soft light of the candle-lit choir, was shut out into twilight. In the high carved seats behind and beyond the choir the congregation was sitting; Miss Dobell, who never missed a service that her brother was singing, with her pinched white face and funny old- fashioned bonnet, lost between the huge arms of her seat; Mrs. Combermere, with a friend, stiff and majestic; Mrs. Cole and her sister-in-law, Amy Cole; a few tourists; a man or two; Major Drake, who liked to join in the psalms with his deep bass; and little Mr. Thompson, one of the masters at the School who loved music and always came to Evensong when he could.

There they were then, and the Archdeacon, looking at them from his stall, could not but feel that they were rather a poor lot. Not that he exactly despised them; he felt kindly towards them and would have done no single one of them an injury, but he knew them all so well--Mrs. Combermere, Miss Dobell, Mrs. Cole, Drake, Thompson. They were shadows before him. If he looked hard at them, they seemed to disappear....

The exultation that he had felt as he stood outside his house-door increased with every moment that passed. It was strange, but he had never, perhaps, in all his life been so happy as he was at that hour. He was driven by the sense of it to that, with him, rarest of all things, introspection. Why should he feel like this? Why did his heart beat thickly, why were his cheeks flushed with a triumphant heat? It could not but be that he was realising to-day how everything was well with him. And why should he not realise it? Looking up to the high vaulted roofs above him, he greeted God, greeted Him as an equal, and thanked Him as a fellow- companion who had helped him through a difficult and dusty journey. He thanked Him for his health, for his bodily vigour and strength, for his beauty, for his good brain, for his successful married life, for his wife (poor Amy), for his house and furniture, for his garden and tennis-lawn, for his carriage and horses, for his son, for his position in the town, his dominance in the Chapter, his authority on the School Council, his importance in the district.... For all these things he thanked God, and he greeted Him with an outstretched hand.

"As one power to another," his soul cried, "greetings! You have been a true and loyal friend to me. Anything that I can do for You I will do...."

The time came for him to read the First Lesson. He crossed to the Lectern and was conscious that the tourists were whispering together about him. He read aloud, in his splendid voice, something about battles and vengeance, plagues and punishment, God's anger and the trembling Israelites. He might himself have been an avenging God as he read. He was uplifted with the glory of power and the exultation of personal dominion...

He crossed back to his seat, and, as they began the "Magnificat," his eye alighted on the tomb of the Black Bishop. In the volume on Polchester in Chimes' Cathedral Series (4th edition, 1910), page 52, you will find this description of the Black Bishop's Tomb: "It stands between the pillars at the far east end of the choir in the eighth bay from the choir screen. The stone screen which surrounds the tomb is of most elaborate workmanship, and it has, in certain lights, the effect of delicate lace; the canopy over the tomb has pinnacles which rise high above the level of the choir- stalls. The tomb itself is made from a solid block of a dark blue stone. The figure of the bishop, carved in black marble, lies with his hands folded across his breast, clothed in his Episcopal robes and mitre, and crozier on his shoulder. At his feet are a vizor and a pair of gauntlets, these also carved in black marble. On one finger of his right hand is a ring carved from some green stone. His head is raised by angels and at his feet beyond the vizor and gauntlets are tiny figures of four knights fully armed. A small arcade runs round the tomb with a series of shields in the spaces, and these shields have his motto, 'God giveth Strength,' and the arms of the See of Polchester. His epitaph in brass round the edge of the tomb has thus been translated:

"'Here, having surrendered himself back to God, lies Henry of Arden. His life, which was distinguished for its great piety, its unfailing generosity, its noble statesmanship, was rudely taken in the nave of this Cathedral by men who feared neither the punishment of their fellows nor the just vengeance of an irate God.

"'He died, bravely defending this great house of Prayer, and is now, in eternal happiness, fulfilling the reward of all good and faithful servants, at his Master's side.'"

It has been often remarked by visitors to the Cathedral how curiously this tomb catches light from all sides of the building, but this is undoubtedly in the main due to the fact that the blue stone of which it is chiefly composed responds immediately to the purple and violet lights that fall from the great East window. On a summer day the blue of the tomb seems almost opaque as though it were made of blue glass, and the gilt on the background of the screen and the brasses of the groins glitter and sparkle like fire.

Brandon to-day, wrapped in his strange mood of almost mystical triumph, felt as though he were, indeed, a reincarnation of the great Bishop.

As the "Magnificat" proceeded, he seemed to enter into the very tomb and share in the Bishop's dust. "I stood beside you," he might almost have cried, "when in the last savage encounter you faced them on the very steps of the altar, striking down two of them with your fists, falling at last, bleeding from a hundred wounds, but crying at the very end, 'God is my right!'"

As he stared across at the tomb, he seemed to see the great figure, deserted by all his terrified adherents, lying in his blood in the now deserted Cathedral; he saw the coloured dusk creep forward and cover him. And then, in the darkness of the night, the two faithful servants who crept in and carried away his body to keep it in safety until his day should come again.

Born in 1100, Henry of Arden had been the first Bishop to give Polchester dignity and power. What William of Wykeham was to Winchester, that Henry of Arden was to the See of Polchester. Through all the wild days of the quarrel between Stephen and Matilda he had stood triumphant, yielding at last only to the mad overwhelming attacks of his private enemies. Of those he had had many. It had been said of him that "he thought himself God--the proudest prelate on earth." Proud he may have been, but he had loved his Bishopric. It was in his time that the Saint Margaret's Chapel had been built, through his energy that the two great Western Towers had risen, because of him that Polchester now could boast one of the richest revenues of any Cathedral in Europe. Men said that he had plundered, stolen the land of powerless men, himself headed forays against neighbouring villages and even castles. He had done it for the greater glory of God. They had been troublous times. It had been every man for himself....

He had told his people that he was God's chief servant; it was even said that he had once, in the plenitude of his power, cried that he was God Himself....

His figure remained to this very day dominating Polchester, vast in stature, black-bearded, rejoicing in his physical strength. He could kill, they used to say, an ox with his fist....

The "Gloria" rang triumphantly up into the shadows of the nave. Brandon moved once more across to the Lectern. He read of the casting of the money-changers out of the Temple.

His voice quivered with pride and exultation so that Cobbett, who had acquired, after many years' practice, the gift of sleeping during the Lessons and Sermon with his eyes open, woke up with a start and wondered what was the matter.

Brandon's mood, when he was back in his own drawing-room, did not leave him; it was rather intensified by the cosiness and security of his home. Lying back in his large arm-chair in front of the fire, his long legs stretched out before him, he could hear the rain beating on the window- panes and beyond that the murmur of the organ (Brockett, the organist, was practising, as he often did after Evensong).

The drawing-room was a long narrow one with many windows; it was furnished in excellent taste. The carpet and the curtains and the dark blue coverings to the chairs were all a little faded, but this only gave them an additional dignity and repose. There were two large portraits of himself and Mrs. Brandon painted at the time of their marriage, some low white book-shelves, a large copy of "Christ in the Temple"--plenty of space, flowers, light.

Mrs. Brandon was, at this time, a woman of forty-two, but she looked very much less than that. She was slight, dark, pale, quite undistinguished. She had large grey eyes that looked on to the ground when you spoke to her. She was considered a very shy woman, negative in every way. She agreed with everything that was said to her and seemed to have no opinions of her own. She was simply "the wife of the Archdeacon." Mrs. Combermere considered her a "poor little fool." She had no real friends in Polchester, and it made little difference to any gathering whether she were there or not. She had been only once known to lose her temper in public--once in the market-place she had seen a farmer beat his horse over the eyes. She had actually gone up to him and struck him. Afterwards she had said that "she did not like to see animals ill-treated." The Archdeacon had apologised for her, and no more had been said about it. The farmer had borne her no grudge.

She sat now at the little tea-table, her eyes screwed up over the serious question of giving the Archdeacon his tea exactly as he wanted it. Her whole mind was apparently engaged on this problem, and the Archdeacon did not care to-day that she did not answer his questions and support his comments because he was very, very happy, the whole of his being thrilling with security and success and innocent pride.

Joan Brandon came in. In appearance she was, as Mrs. Sampson said, "insignificant." You would not look at her twice any more than you would have looked at her mother twice. Her figure was slight and her legs (she was wearing long skirts this year for the first time) too long. Her hair was dark brown and her eyes dark brown. She had nice rosy cheeks, but they were inclined to freckle. She smiled a good deal and laughed, when in company, more noisily than was proper. "A bit of a tomboy, I'm afraid," was what one used to hear about her. But she was not really a tomboy; she moved quietly, and her own bedroom was always neat and tidy. She had very little pocket-money and only seldom new clothes, not because the Archdeacon was mean, but because Joan was so often forgotten and left out of the scheme of things. It was surprising that the only girl in the house should be so often forgotten, but the Archdeacon did not care for girls, and Mrs. Brandon did not appear to think very often of any one except the Archdeacon. Falk, Joan's brother, now at Oxford, when he was at home had other things to do than consider Joan. She had gone, ever since she was twelve, to the Polchester High School for Girls, and there she was popular, and might have made many friends, had it not been that she could not invite her companions to her home. Her father did not like "noise in the house." She had been Captain of the Hockey team; the small girls in the school had all adored her. She had left the place six months ago and had come home to "help her mother." She had had, in honest fact, six months' loneliness, although no one knew that except herself. Her mother had not wanted her help. There had been nothing for her to do, and she had felt herself too young to venture into the company of older girls in the town. She had been rather "blue" and had looked back on Seafield House, the High School, with longing, and then suddenly, one morning, for no very clear reason she had taken a new view of life. Everything seemed delightful and even thrilling, commonplace things that she had known all her days, the High Street, keeping her rooms tidy, spending or saving the minute monthly allowance, the Cathedral, the river. She was all in a moment aware that something very delightful would shortly occur. What it was she did not know, and she laughed at herself for imagining that anything extraordinary could ever happen to any one so commonplace as herself, but there the strange feeling was and it would not go away.

To-day, as always when her father was there, she came in very quietly, sat down near her mother, saw that she made no sort of interruption to the Archdeacon's flow of conversation. She found that he was in a good humour to-day, and she was glad of that because it would please her mother. She herself had a great interest in all that he said. She thought him a most wonderful man, and secretly was swollen with pride that she was his daughter. It did not hurt her at all that he never took any notice of her. Why should he? Nor did she ever feel jealous of Falk, her father's favourite. That seemed to her quite natural. She had the idea, now most thoroughly exploded but then universally held in Polchester, that women were greatly inferior to men. She did not read the more advanced novels written by Mme. Sarah Grand and Mrs. Lynn Linton. I am ashamed to say that her favourite authors were Miss Alcott and Miss Charlotte Mary Yonge. Moreover, she herself admired Falk extremely. He seemed to her a hero and always right in everything that he did.

Her father continued to talk, and behind the reverberation of his deep voice the roll of the organ like an approving echo could faintly be heard.

"There was a moment when I thought Foster was going to interfere. I've been against the garden-roller from the first--they've got one and what do they want another for? And, anyway, he thinks I meddle with the School's affairs too much. Who wants to meddle with the School's affairs? I'm sure they're nothing but a nuisance, but some one's got to prevent the place from going to wrack and ruin, and if they all leave it to me I can't very well refuse it, can I? Hey?"

"No, dear."

"You see what I mean?"

"Yes, dear."

"Well, then--" (As though Mrs. Brandon had just been overcome in an argument in which she'd shown the greatest obstinacy.) "There you are. It would be false modesty to deny that I've got the Chapter more or less in my pocket And why shouldn't I have? Has any one worked harder for this place and the Cathedral than I have?"

"No, dear."

"Well, then.... There's this new fellow Ronder coming to-day. Don't know much about him, but he won't give much trouble, I expect--trouble in the way of delaying things, I mean. What we want is work done expeditiously. I've just about got that Chapter moving at last. Ten years' hard work. Deserve a V.C. or something. Hey?"

"Yes, dear, I'm sure you do."

The Archdeacon gave one of his well-known roars of laughter--a laugh famous throughout the county, a laugh described by his admirers as "Homeric," by his enemies as "ear-splitting." There was, however, enemies or no enemies, something sympathetic in that laugh, something boyish and simple and honest.

He suddenly pulled himself up, bringing his long legs close against his broad chest.

"No letter from Falk to-day, was there?"

"No, dear."

"Humph. That's three weeks we haven't heard. Hope there's nothing wrong."

"What could there be wrong, dear?"

"Nothing, of course.... Well, Joan, and what have you been doing with yourself all day?"

It was only in his most happy and resplendent moods that the Archdeacon held jocular conversations with his daughter. These conversations had been, in the past, moments of agony and terror to her, but since that morning when she had suddenly woken to a realisation of the marvellous possibilities in life her terror had left her. There were other people in the world besides her father....

Nevertheless, a little, her agitation was still with her. She looked up at him, smiling.

"Oh, I don't know, father.... I went to the Library this morning to change the books for mother--"

"Novels, I suppose. No one ever reads anything but trash nowadays."

"They hadn't anything that mother put down. They never have. Miss Milton sits on the new novels and keeps them for Mrs. Sampson and Mrs. Combermere."

"Sits on them?"

"Yes--really sits on them. I saw her take one from under her skirt the other day when Mrs. Sampson asked for it. It was one that mother has wanted a long time."

The Archdeacon was angry. "I never heard anything so scandalous. I'll just see to that. What's the use of being on the Library Committee if that kind of thing happens? That woman shall go."

"Oh no! father!..."

"Of course she shall go. I never heard anything so dishonest in my life!..."

Joan remembered that little conversation until the end of her life. And with reason.

The door was flung open. Some one came hurriedly in, then stopped, with a sudden arrested impulse, looking at them. It was Falk.

Falk was a very good-looking man--fair hair, light blue eyes like his father's, slim and straight and quite obviously fearless. It was that quality of courage that struck every one who saw him; it was not only that he feared, it seemed, no one and nothing, but that he went a step further than that, spending his life in defying every one and everything, as a practised dueller might challenge every one he met in order to keep his play in practice. "I don't like young Brandon," Mrs. Sampson said. "He snorts contempt at you...."

He was only twenty-one, a contemptuous age. He looked as though he had been living in that house for weeks, although, as a fact, he had just driven up, after a long and tiresome journey, in an ancient cab through the pouring rain. The Archdeacon gazed at his son in a bewildered, confused amaze, as though he, a convinced sceptic, were suddenly confronted, in broad daylight, with an undoubted ghost.

"What's the matter?" he said at last. "Why are you here?"

"I've been sent down," said Falk.

It was characteristic of the relationship in that family that, at that statement, Mrs. Brandon and Joan did not look at Falk but at the Archdeacon.

"Sent down!"

"Yes, for ragging! They wanted to do it last term."

"Sent down!" The Archdeacon shot to his feet; his voice suddenly lifted into a cry. "And you have the impertinence to come here and tell me! You walk in as though nothing had happened! You walk in!..."

"You're angry," said Falk, smiling. "Of course I knew you would be. You might hear me out first. But I'll come along when I've unpacked and you're a bit cooler. I wanted some tea, but I suppose that will have to wait. You just listen, father, and you'll find it isn't so bad. Oxford's a rotten place for any one who wants to be on his own, and, anyway, you won't have to pay my bills any more."

Falk turned and went.

The Archdeacon, as he stood there, felt a dim mysterious pain as though an adversary whom he completely despised had found suddenly with his weapon a joint in his armour.

Chapter II

Ronders

The train that brought Falk Brandon back to Polchester brought also the Ronders--Frederick Ronder, newly Canon of Polchester, and his aunt, Miss Alice Ronder. About them the station gathered in a black cloud, dirty, obscure, lit by flashes of light and flame, shaken with screams, rumblings, the crashing of carriage against carriage, the rattle of cab- wheels on the cobbles outside. To-day also there was the hiss and scatter of the rain upon the glass roof. The Ronders stood, not bewildered, for that they never were, but thinking what would be best. The new Canon was a round man, round-shouldered, round-faced, round-stomached, round legged. A fair height, he was not ludicrous, but it seemed that if you laid him down he would roll naturally, still smiling, to the farthest end of the station. He wore large, very round spectacles. His black clerical coat and trousers and hat were scrupulously clean and smartly cut. He was not a dandy, but he was not shabby. He smiled a great deal, not nervously as curates are supposed to smile, not effusively, but simply with geniality. His aunt was a contrast, thin, straight, stiff white collar, little black bow-tie, coat like a man's, skirt with no nonsense about it. No nonsense about her anywhere. She was not unamiable, perhaps, but business came first.

"Well, what do we do?" he asked.

"We collect our bags and find the cab," she answered briskly.

They found their bags, and there were a great many of them; Miss Ronder, having seen that they were all there and that there was no nonsense about the porter, moved off to the barrier followed by her nephew.

As they came into the station square, all smelling of hay and the rain, the deluge slowly withdrew its forces, recalling them gradually so that the drops whispered now, patter-patter--pit-pat. A pigeon hovered down and pecked at the cobbles. Faint colour threaded the thick blotting-paper grey.

Old Fawcett himself had come to the station to meet them. Why had he felt it to be an occasion? God only knows. A new Canon was nothing to him. He very seldom now, being over eighty, with a strange "wormy" pain in his left ear, took his horses out himself. He saved his money and counted it over by his fireside to see that his old woman didn't get any of it. He hated his old woman, and in a vaguely superstitious, thoroughly Glebeshire fashion half-believed that she had cast a spell over him and was really responsible for his "wormy" ear.

Why had he come? He didn't himself know. Perhaps Ronder was going to be of importance in the place, he had come from London and they all had money in London. He licked his purple protruding lips greedily as he saw the generous man. Yes, kindly and generous he looked....

They got into the musty cab and rattled away over the cobbles.

"I hope Mrs. Clay got the telegram all right." Miss Ronder's thin bosom was a little agitated beneath its white waistcoat. "You'll never forgive me if things aren't looking as though we'd lived in the place for months."

Alice Ronder was over sixty and as active as a woman of forty. Ronder looked at her and laughed.

"Never forgive you! What words! Do I ever cherish grievances? Never... but I do like to be comfortable."

"Well, everything was all right a week ago. I've slaved at the place, as you know, and Mrs. Clay's a jewel--but she complains of the Polchester maids--says there isn't one that's any good. Oh, I want my tea, I want my tea!"

They were climbing up from the market-place into the High Street. Ronder looked about him with genial curiosity.

"Very nice," he said; "I believe I can be comfortable here."

"If you aren't comfortable you certainly won't stay," she answered him sharply.

"Then I must be comfortable," he replied, laughing.

He laughed a great deal, but absent-mindedly, as though his thoughts were elsewhere. It would have been interesting to a student of human nature to have been there and watched him as he sat back in the cab, looking through the window, indeed, but seeing apparently nothing. He seemed to be gazing through his round spectacles very short-sightedly, his eyes screwed up and dim. His fat soft hands were planted solidly on his thick knees.

The observer would have been interested because he would soon have realised that Ronder saw everything; nothing, however insignificant, escaped him, but he seemed to see with his brain as though he had learnt the trick of forcing it to some new function that did not properly belong to it. The broad white forehead under the soft black clerical hat was smooth, unwrinkled, mild and calm.... He had trained it to be so.

The High Street was like any High Street of a small Cathedral town in the early evening. The pavements were sleek and shiny after the rain; people were walking with the air of being unusually pleased with the world, always the human expression when the storms have withdrawn and there is peace and colour in the sky. There were lights behind the solemn panes of Bennett's the bookseller's, that fine shop whose first master had seen Sir Walter Scott in London and spoken to Byron. In his window were rows of the classics in calf and first editions of the Surtees books and Dr. Syntax. At the very top of the High Street was Mellock's the pastry- cook's, gay with its gas, rich with its famous saffron buns, its still more famous ginger-bread cake, and, most famous of all, its lemon biscuits. Even as the Ronders' cab paused for a moment before it turned to pass under the dark Arden Gate on to the asphalt of the Precincts, the great Mrs. Mellock herself, round and rubicund, came to the door and looked about her at the weather. An errand-boy passed, whistling, down the hill, a stiff military-looking gentleman with white moustaches mounted majestically the steps of the Conservative Club; then they rattled under the black archway, echoed for a moment on the noisy cobbles, then slipped into the quiet solemnity of the Precincts asphalt. It was Brandon who had insisted on the asphalt. Old residents had complained that to take away the cobbles would be to rid the Precincts of all its atmosphere.

"I don't care about atmosphere," said the Archdeacon, "I want to sleep at night."

Very quiet here; not a sound penetrated. The Cathedral was a huge shadow above its darkened lawns; not a human soul was to be seen.

The cab stopped with a jerk at Number Eight. The bell was rung by old Fawcett, who stood on the top step looking down at Ronder and wondering how much he dared to ask him. Ask him too much now and perhaps he would not deal with him in the future. Moreover, although the man wore large spectacles and was fat he was probably not a fool.... Fawcett could not tell why he was so sure, but there was something....

Mrs. Clay was at the door, smiling and ordering a small frightened girl to "hurry up now." Miss Ronder disappeared into the house. Ronder stood for a moment looking about him as though he were a spy in enemy country and must let nothing escape him.

"Whose is that big place there?" he asked Fawcett, pointing to a house that stood by itself at the farther corner of the Precincts.

"Archdeacon Brandon's, sir."

"Oh!..." Ronder mounted the steps. "Good night," he said to Fawcett. "Mrs. Clay, pay the cabman, please."

The Ronders had taken this house a month ago; for two months before that it had stood desolate, wisps of paper and straw blowing about it, its "To let" notice creaking and screaming in every wind. The Hon. Mrs. Pentecoste, an eccentric old lady, had lived there for many years, and had died in the middle of a game of patience; her worn and tattered furniture had been sold at auction, and the house had remained unlet for a considerable period because people in the town said that the ghost of Mrs. Pentecoste's cat (a famous blue Persian) walked there. The Ronders cared nothing for ghosts; the house was exactly what they wanted. It had two panelled rooms, two powder-closets, and a little walled garden at the back with fruit trees.

It was quite wonderful what Miss Ronder had done in a month; she had abandoned Eaton Square for a week, worked in the Polchester house like a slave, then retired back to Eaton Square again, leaving Mrs. Clay, her aide-de-camp, to manage the rest. Mrs. Clay had managed very well. She would not have been in the service of the Ronders for nearly fifteen years had she not had a gift for managing....

Ronder, washed and brushed, came down to tea, looked about him, and saw that all was good.

"I congratulate you, Aunt Alice," he said--"excellent!"

Miss Ronder very slightly flushed.

"There are a lot of things still to be done," she said; nevertheless she was immensely pleased.

The drawing-room was charming. The stencilled walls, the cushions of the chairs, the cover of a gate-legged table, the curtains of the mullioned windows were of a warm dark blue. And whatever in the room was not blue seemed to be white, or wood in its natural colour, or polished brass. Books ran round the room in low white book-cases. In one corner a pure white Hermes stood on a pedestal with tiny wings outspread. There was only one picture, an excellent copy of "Rembrandt's mother." The windows looked out to the garden, now veiled by the dusk of evening. Tea was on a little table close to the white tiled fireplace. A little square brass clock chimed the half-hour as Ronder came in.

"I suppose Ellen will be over," Ronder said. He drank in the details of the room with a quite sensual pleasure. He went over to the Hermes and lifted it, holding it for a moment in his podgy hands.

"You beauty!" he whispered aloud. He put it back, turned round to his aunt.

"Of course Ellen will be over," he repeated.

"Of course," Miss Ronder repeated, picking up the old square black lacquer tea-caddy and peering into it.

He picked up the books on the table--two novels, Sentimental Tommy, by J. M. Barrie, and Sir George Tressady, by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. Swinburne's Tale of Balen, and The Works of Max Beerbohm. Last of all Leslie Stephen's Social Rights and Duties.

He looked at them all, with their light yellow Mudie labels, their fresh bindings, then, slowly and very carefully, put them back on the table.

He always handled books as though they were human beings.

He came and sat down by the fire.

"I won't see over the place until to-morrow," he said. "What have you done about the other books?"

"The book-cases are in. It's the best room in the house. Looks over the river and gets most of the light. The books are as you packed them. I haven't dared touch them. In fact, I've left that room entirely for you to arrange."

"Well," he said, "if you've done the rest of this house as well as this room, you'll do. It's jolly--it really is. I'm going to like this place."

"And you hated the very idea of it."

"I hated the discomfort there'd be before we settled in. But the settling in is going to be easier than I thought. Of course we don't know yet how the land lies. Ellen will tell us."

They were silent for a little. Then he looked at her with a puzzled, half- humorous, half-ironical glance.

"It's a bit of a blow to you, Aunt Alice, burying yourself down here. London was the breath of your nostrils. What did you come for? Love of me?"

She looked steadily back at him.

"Not love exactly. Curiosity, perhaps. I want to see at first hand what you'll do. You're the most interesting human being I've ever met, and that isn't prejudice. Aunts do not, as a rule, find their nephews interesting. And what have you come here for? I assure you I haven't the least idea."

The door was opened by Mrs. Clay.

"Miss Stiles," she said.

Miss Stiles, who came in, was not handsome. She was large and fat, with a round red face like a sun, and she wore colours too bright for her size. She had a slow soft voice like the melancholy moo of a cow. She was not a bad woman, but, temperamentally, was made unhappy by the success or good fortune of others. Were you in distress, she would love you, cherish you, never abandon you. She would share her last penny with you, run to the end of the world for you, defend you before the whole of humanity. Were you, however, in robust health, she would hint to every one of a possible cancer; were you popular, it would worry her terribly and she would discover a thousand faults in your character; were you successful in your work, she would pray for your approaching failure lest you should become arrogant. She gossiped without cessation, and always, as it were, to restore the proper balance of the world, to pull down the mighty from their high places, to lift the humble only that they in their turn might be pulled down. She played fluently and execrably on the piano. She spent her day in running from house to house.

She had independent means, lived four months of the year in Polchester (she had been born there and her family had been known there for many generations before her), four months in London, and the rest of the year abroad. She had met Alice Ronder in London and attached herself to her. She liked the Ronders because they never boasted of their successes, because Alice had a weak heart, because Ronder, who knew her character, half-humorously deprecated his talents, which were, as he knew well enough, no mean ones. She bored Alice Ronder, but Ronder found her useful. She told him a great deal that he wanted to know, and although she was never accurate in her information, he could separate the wheat from the chaff. She was a walking mischief-maker, but meant no harm to a living soul. She prided herself on her honesty, on saying exactly what she thought to every one. She was kindness itself to her servants, who adored her, as did railway-porters, cabmen and newspaper men. She overtipped wherever she went because "she could not bear not to be liked." In our Polchester world she was an important factor. She was always the first to hear any piece of news in our town, and she gave it a wrong twist just as fast as she could.

She was really delighted to see the Ronders, and told them so with many assurances of affection, but she was a little distressed to find the room so neat and settled. She would have preferred them to be "in a thorough mess" and badly in need of her help.

"My dear Alice, how quick you've been! How clever you are! At the same time I think you'll find there's a good deal to arrange still. The Polchester girls are so slow and always breaking things. I suppose some things have been smashed in the move--nothing very valuable, I hope."

"Lots of things, Ellen," said Ronder, laughing. "We've had the most awful time and badly need your help. It's only this room that Aunt Alice got straight--just to have something to show, you know. And our journey down! I can't tell you what it was, hardly room to breathe and coming up here in the rain!"

"Oh, you poor things! What a welcome to Polchester! You must simply have hated the look of the whole place. Such a bad introduction, and everything looking as gloomy and depressing as possible. I expect you wished yourselves well out of it. I don't wonder you're depressed. I hope you're not feeling your heart, Alice dear."

"Well, I am a little," acknowledged Miss Ronder. "But I shall go to bed early and get a good night."

"You poor dear! I was afraid you'd be absolutely done up. Now, you're not to get up in the morning and I'll run about and do your shopping for you. I insist. How's Mrs. Clay?"

"A little grumpy at having so much to do," said Ronder, "but she'll get over it."

"I'm afraid she's a little ill-tempered at times," said Miss Stiles with satisfaction. "I thought when I came in that she looked out of sorts. Troubles never come singly, of course."

All was well now and Miss Stiles completely satisfied. She admired the room and the Hermes, and prophesied that, after a week or two, they would probably find things not so bad after all. She drank several cups of tea and passed on to general conversation. It was obvious, very soon, that she was bursting with a piece of news.

"I can see, Ellen," said Ronder, humorously observing her, "that you're longing to tell us something."

"Well, it is interesting. What do you think? Falk Brandon has been sent down from Oxford for misbehaviour."

"And who is Falk Brandon?" asked Ronder.

"The Archdeacon's son. His only boy. I've told you about Archdeacon Brandon many times. He thinks he runs the town and has been terribly above himself for a long while. This will pull him down a little. I must say, although I don't want to be uncharitable, that I'm glad of it. It's too absurd the way that he's been having everything his own way here. All the Canons are over ninety and simply give in to him about everything."

"When did this happen?"

"Oh, it's only just happened. He arrived by your train. I saw young George Lascelles as I was on my way up to you. He met him at the station--Falk, I mean--and he didn't pretend to disguise it. George said 'Hullo, Brandon, what are you doing here?' and Falk said 'Oh, I've been sent down'--just like that. Didn't pretend to disguise it. He's always been as brazen as anything. He'll give his father a lot of trouble before he's done."

"There's nothing very terrible," said Ronder, laughing, "in being sent down from Oxford. I've known plenty of good fellows who were."

Miss Stiles looked annoyed. "Oh, but you don't know. It will be terrible for his father. He's the proudest man in England. Some people call it conceit, but, however that may be, he thinks there's nothing like his family. Even poor Mrs. Brandon he's proud of when she isn't there. It will be awful for him that every one should know."

Ronder said nothing.

"You know," said Miss Stiles, who felt that her news had fallen flat, "you'll have to fight him or give in to him. There's no other way here. I hope you'll fight him."

"I?" said Ronder. "Why, I never fight anybody. I'm much too lazy."

"Then you'll never be comfortable here, that's all. He can't bear being crossed. He must have his way about everything. If the Bishop weren't so old and the Dean so stupid.... What we want here is a little life in the place."

"You needn't look to us for that, Ellen," said Ronder. "We've come here to rest----"

"Peace, perfect peace...."

"I don't believe you," said Miss Stiles, tossing her head. "I'd be disappointed to think it of you."

Alice Ronder gave her nephew a curious look, half of amusement, half of expectation.

"It's quite true, Ellen," she said. "Now, if you've finished your tea, come and look at the rest of the house."

Chapter III

One of Joan's Days

I find it difficult now to realise how apart from the life of the world Polchester was in those days. Even now, when the War has shaken up and jostled together every small village in Great Britain, Polchester still has some shreds of its isolation left to it; but then--why, it might have been a walled-in fortress of mediaeval times, for all its connection with the outside world!

This isolation was quite deliberately maintained. I don't mean, of course, that Mrs. Combermere and Brandon and old Bentinck-Major and Mrs. Sampson said to themselves in so many words, "We will keep this to ourselves and defend its walls against every new invader, every new idea, new custom, new impulse. We will all be butchered rather than allow one old form, tradition, superstition to go!" It was not as conscious as that, but in effect it was that that it came to. And they were wonderfully assisted by circumstances. It is true that the main line ran through Polchester from Drymouth, but its travellers were hurrying south, and only a few trippers, a few Americans, a few sentimentalists stayed to see the Cathedral; and those who stayed found "The Bull" an impossibly inconvenient and uncomfortable hostelry and did not come again. It is true that even then, in 1897, there were many agitations by sharp business men like Crosbie and John Allen, Croppet and Fred Barnstaple, to make the place more widely known, more commercially attractive. It was not until later that the golf course was laid out and the St. Leath Hotel rose on Pol Hill. But other things were tried--steamers on the Pol, char-à-bancs to various places of local interest, and so on--but, at this time, all these efforts failed. The Cathedral was too strong for them, above all Brandon and Mrs. Combermere were too strong for them. Nothing was done to encourage strangers; I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Combermere didn't pay old Jolliffe of "The Bull" so much a year to keep his hotel inconvenient and insanitary. The men on the Town Council were for the most part like the Canons, aged and conservative. It is true that it was in 1897 that Barnstaple was elected Mayor, but without Ronder I doubt whether even he would have been able to do very much. The town then revolved, so to speak, entirely on its own axis; it revolved between the two great events of the year, the summer Polchester Fair, the winter County Ball, and those two great affairs were conducted, in every detail and particular, as they had been conducted a hundred years before. I find it strange, writing from the angle of to-day, to conceive it possible that so short a time ago anything in England could have been so conservative. I myself was only thirteen years of age when Ronder came to our town, and saw all grown figures with the exaggerated colour and romance that local inquisitive age bestows. About my own contemporaries, young Jeremy Cole for instance, there was no colour at all, but the older figures were strange--gigantic, almost mythological. Mrs. Combermere, the Dean, the Archdeacon, Mrs. Sampson, Canon Ronder, moved about the town, to my young eyes, like gods and goddesses, and it was not until after my return to Polchester at the end of my first Cambridge year that I saw clearly how small a town it was and how tiny the figures in it.

Joan Brandon thought her father a marvellous man, as I have already said, but she had seen him too often lose his temper, too often snub her mother, too often be upset by trivial and unimportant details, to conceive him romantically. Falk, her brother, was romantic to her because she had seen so much less of him; her father she knew too well. For some time after Falk's return from Oxford nothing happened. Joan did not know what exactly she had expected to happen, but she had an uneasy sense that more was going on behind the scenes than she knew.

The Archdeacon did not speak to Falk unless he were compelled, but Falk did not seem to mind this in the least. His handsome defiant face flashed scorn at the whole family.

He was out of the house most of the day, came down to breakfast when every one else had finished, and often was not present at dinner in the evening. The Archdeacon had said that breakfast was not to be kept for him, but nevertheless breakfast was there, on the table, however late he was. The cook and, indeed, all the servants adored him because, I suppose, he had no sense of class-difference at all and laughed and joked with any one if he was in a good temper. All these first days he spoke scarcely one word to Joan; it was as though the whole family were in his black books for some disgraceful act--they were the guilty ones and not he.

Joan blamed herself for feeling so light-hearted and gay during this family crisis, but she could not help it. A very short time ago the knowledge that battle was engaged in the very heart of the house would have made her miserable and apprehensive, but now it seemed to be all outside her and unconnected with her as though she had a life of her own that no one could touch. Her courage seemed to grow with every half-hour of her life. Some months passed, and then one morning she came into the drawing-room and found her mother rather bewildered and distressed.

"Oh dear, I really don't know what to do!" said her mother.

It was so seldom that Joan was appealed to for advice that her heart now beat with pride.

"What's the matter, mother?" she asked, trying to look dignified and unconcerned.

Mrs. Brandon looked at her with a frightened and startled look as though she had been speaking to herself and had not wished to be overheard.

"Oh, Joan!...I didn't know that you were there!"

"What's the matter? Is it anything I can help about?"

"'No, dear, nothing...really I didn't know that you were there."

"No, but you must let me help, mother." Joan marvelled at her own boldness as she spoke.

"It's nothing you can do, dear."

"But it's sure to be something I can do. Do you know that I've been home for months and months simply with the idea of helping you, and I'm never allowed to do anything?"

"Really, Joan--I don't think that's quite the way to speak."

"No, but, mother, it's true. I want to help. I'm grown up. I'm going to dinner at the Castle, and I must help you, or--or--I shall go away and earn my own living!"

This last was so startling and fantastic that both Joan and her mother stared at one another in a kind of horrified amazement.

"No, I didn't mean that, of course," Joan said, hurriedly recovering herself. "But you must see that I must have some work to do."

"I don't know what your father would say," said Mrs. Brandon, still bewildered.

"Oh, never mind father," said Joan quickly; "this is a matter just between you and me. I'm here to help you, and you must let me do something. Now, what's the trouble to-day?"

"I don't know, dear. There's no trouble exactly. Things are so difficult just now. The fact is that I promised to go to tea with Miss Burnett this afternoon and now your father wants me to go with him to the Deanery. So provoking! Miss Burnett caught me in the street, where it's always so difficult to think of excuses."

"Let me go to Miss Burnett's instead," said Joan. "It's quite time I took on some of the calling for you. I've never seen Mr. Morris, and I hear he's very nice."

"Very well, dear," said Mrs. Brandon, suddenly beginning, as her way was when there was any real opposition, to capitulate on all sides at once. "Suppose you do go, dear. I'm sure it's very kind of you. And you might take those books back to the Circulating Library as well. It's Market-Day. Are you sure you won't mind the horses and cows and dogs?"

Joan laughed. "I believe you think I'm still five years old, mother. That's splendid. I'll start off after lunch."

Joan went up to her room, elated. Truly, this was a great step forward. It occurred to her on further reflection that something very serious indeed must be going on behind the scenes to cause her mother to give in so quickly. She sat on her old faded rocking-chair, her hands crossed behind her head, thinking it all out. Did she once begin calling on her own account she was grown-up indeed. What would these Morrises be like?

She found now that she was beginning to be a little frightened. Mr. Morris was the new Rector of St. James', the little church over by the cattle market. He had not been in Polchester very long and was said to be a shy timid man, but a good preacher. He was a widower, and his sister-in-law kept house for him. Joan considered further on the great importance of these concessions; it made all the difference to everything. She was now to have a life of her own, and every kind of adventure and romance was possible for her. She was suddenly so happy that she sprang up and did a little dance round her room, a sort of polka, that became so vehement that the pictures and the little rickety table rattled.

"I'll be so grown-up at the Morrises' this afternoon that they'll think I've been calling for years," she said to herself.

She had need of all her courage and optimism at luncheon, for it was a gloomy meal. Only her father and mother were present. They were all very silent.

After lunch she went upstairs, put on her hat and coat, picked up the three Library books, and started off. It was a sunny day, with shadows chasing one another across the Cathedral green. There was, as there so often is in Polchester, a smell of the sea in the air, cold and invigorating. She paused for a moment and looked across at the Cathedral. She did not know why, but she had been always afraid of the Cathedral. She had never loved it, and had always wished that they could go on Sundays to some little church like St. James'.

For most of her conscious life the Cathedral had hung over her with its dark menacing shadow, forbidding her, as it seemed to her, to be gay or happy or careless. To-day the thought suddenly came to her, "That place is going to do us harm. I hate it," and for a moment she was depressed and uneasy; but when she came out from the Arden Gate and saw the High Street all shining with the sun, running down the hill into glittering distance, she was gloriously cheerful once more. There the second wonderful thing that day happened to her. She had taken scarcely a step down the hill when she came upon Mrs. Sampson. There was nothing wonderful about that; Mrs. Sampson, being the wife of a Dean who was much more retiring than he should be, was to be seen in public at all times and seasons, having to do, as it were, the work of two rather than one. No, the wonderful thing was that Joan suddenly realised that her terror of Mrs. Sampson--a terror that had always been a real thorn in her flesh--was completely gone. It was as though a charm, an Abracadabra, had been whispered over Mrs. Sampson and she had been changed immediately into a rabbit. It had never been Mrs. Sampson's fault that she was alarming to the young. She was a good woman, but she was cursed with two sad burdens--a desperate shyness and a series, unrelenting, unmitigating, mysterious, desperate, of nervous headaches.

Her headaches were a feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies. But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs. Sampson's sharpness of manner, her terrifying habit of rapping out a "Yes" or a "No," her gloomy view of boisterous habits and healthy appetites, made her one most truly to be avoided. Before to-day Joan would have willingly walked a mile out of her way to escape her; to-day she only saw a nervous, pale-faced little woman in an ill-fitting blue dress, for whom she could not be anything but sorry.

"Good morning, Mrs. Sampson."

"Good morning, Joan."

"Isn't it a nice day?"

"It's cold, I think. Is your mother well?"

"Very well, thank you."

"Give her my love."

"I will, Mrs. Sampson."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

Mrs. Sampson's nose, that would take on a blue colour on a cold day, quivered, her thin mouth shut with a snap, and she was gone.

"But I wasn't afraid of her!" She was almost frightened at this new spirit that had come to her, and, feeling rather that in another moment she would be punished for her piratical audacity, she turned up the steps into the Circulating Library.

It was the custom in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs. Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings. She hated children, myself in particular. She was also a Snob of the Snobs, and thanked God on her knees every night for Lady St. Leath, Mrs. Combermere and Mrs. Sampson, by whose graces she was left in her present position.

Joan was still too near childhood to be considered very seriously, and it was well known that her father did not take her very seriously either. She was always, therefore, on the rare occasions when she entered the Library, snubbed by Miss Milton. It must be confessed that to-day, in spite of her success with Mrs. Sampson, she was nervous. She was nervous partly because she hated Miss Milton's red-rimmed eyes, and never looked at them if she could help it, but, in the main, because she knew that her mother was returning the Library books too quickly, and had, moreover, insisted that she should ask for Mr. Barrie's Sentimental Tommy and Mr. Seton Merriman's The Sowers, both of them books that had been asked for for weeks and as steadily and persistently refused.

Joan knew what Miss Milton would say, "That they might be in next week, but that she couldn't be sure." Was Joan strong enough now, in her new- found glory, to fight for them? She did not know.

She advanced to the table smiling. Miss Milton did not look up, but continued to knit one of her horrible stockings.

"Good-morning, Miss Milton. Mother has sent back these books. They were not quite what she wanted."

"I'm sorry for that." Miss Milton took the books into her chilblained protection. "It's a little difficult, I must say, to know what Mrs. Brandon prefers."

"Well, there's Sentimental Tommy," began Joan.

But Miss Milton was an old general.

"Oh, that's out, I'm afraid. Now, here's a sweetly pretty book--Roger Varibrugh's Wife, by Adeline Sergeant. It'a only just out...."

"Or there's The Sowers," said Joan, caught against her will by the red-rimmed eyes and staring at them.

"Oh, that's out, I'm afraid. There are several books here--"

"You promised mother," said Joan, "that she should have Sentimental Tommy this week. You promised her a month ago. It's about time that mother had a book that she cares for."

"Really," said Miss Milton, wide-eyed at Joan's audacity. "You seem to be charging me with some remissness, Miss Brandon. If you have any complaint, I'm sure the Library Committee will attend to it. It's to them I have to answer. When the book is in you shall have it. I can promise no more. I am only human."

"You have said that now for three months," said Joan, beginning, to her own surprised delight, to be angry. "Surely the last reader hasn't been three months over it. I thought subscribers were only allowed to keep a book a week."

Miss Milton's crimson colouring turned to a deep purple.

"The book is out," she said. "Both books are out. They are in great demand. I have no more to say."

The Library door opened, and a young man came in. Joan was still too young to wish for scenes in public. She must give up the battle for to-day. When, however, she saw who it was she blushed. It was young Lord St. Leath --Johnny St. Leath, as he was known to his familiars, who were many and of all sorts and conditions. Joan hated herself for blushing, especially before the odious Miss Milton, but there was a reason. One day in last October after morning service Joan and her mother had waited in the Cloisters to avoid a shower of rain. St. Leath had also waited and very pleasantly had talked to them both. There was nothing very alarming in this, but as the rain cleared and Mrs. Brandon had moved forward across the Green, he had suddenly, with a confusion that had seemed to her charming, asked Joan whether one day they mightn't meet again. He had given her one look straight in the eyes, tried to say something more, failed, and turned away down the Cloisters.

Joan had never before been asked by any young man to meet him again. She had told herself that this was nothing but the merest, most obvious politeness; nevertheless the look that he had given her remained.

Now, as she saw him advancing towards her, there was the thought, was it not on that very morning that her new courage and self-confidence had come to her? The thought was so absurd that she flung it at Miss Milton. But the blush remained.

Johnny was an ungainly young man, with a red face, freckles, a large mouth, and a bull-terrier--a conventional British type, I suppose, saved, nevertheless, from conventionality by his affection for his three plain sisters, his determination to see things as they were, and his sense of humour, the last of these something quite his own, and always appearing in unexpected places. The bull-terrier, in spite of the notice on the Library door that no dogs were admitted, advanced breathlessly and dribbling with excitement for Miss Milton's large black felt slippers.

"Here, Andrew, old man. Heel! Heel!" said Johnny. Andrew, however, quite naturally concluded that this was only an approval of his intentions, and there might have followed an awkward scene had his master not caught him by the collar and held him suspended in mid-air, to his own indignant surprise and astonishment.

Joan laughed, and Miss Milton, quivering between indignation, fear and snobbery, dropped the stocking that she was knitting.

Andrew burst from his master's clutches, rushed the stocking into the farthest recesses of the Library, and proceeded there to enjoy it.

Johnny apologised.

"Oh, it's quite all right, Lord St. Leath," said Miss Milton. "What a fine animal!"

"Yes, he is," said Johnny, rescuing the stocking. "He's as strong as Lucifer. Here, Andrew, you devil, I'll break every bone in your body."

During this little scene Johnny had smiled at Joan, and in so pleasant a way that she was compelled to smile back at him.

"How do you do, Miss Brandon?" He had recalled Andrew now, and the dog was slobbering happily at his feet. "Jolly day, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Joan, and stood there awkwardly, feeling that she ought to go but not knowing quite how to do so. He also seemed embarrassed, and turned abruptly to Miss Milton.

"I say, look here.... Mother asked me to come in and get that book you promised her. What's the name of the thing?...I've got it written down."

He fumbled in his pocket and produced a bit of paper.

"Here it is. Sentimental Tommy, by a man called Barrie. Silly name, but mother's always reading the most awful stuff."

Joan turned towards Miss Milton.

"How funny!" she said. "That's the book I've just been asking for. It's out."

Miss Milton's face was a curious purple.

"Well, that's odd," said Johnny. "Mother told me that you'd sent her a line to say it was in whenever she sent for it."

"It's been out three months," said Joan, staring now straight into Miss Milton's angry eyes.

"I've been keeping..." said Miss Milton. "That is, there's a special copy.... Lady St. Leath specially asked----"

"Is it in, or isn't it?" asked Johnny.

"There is a copy, Lord St. Leath----" With confused fingers Miss Milton searched in a drawer. She produced the book.

"You told me," said Joan, forgetting now in her anger St. Leath and all the world, "that there wouldn't he a copy for weeks. If you'd told me you were keeping one for St. Leath, that would have been different. You shouldn't have told me a lie."

"Do you mean to say," said Johnny, opening his eyes very widely indeed, "that you refused this copy to Miss Brandon?"

"Certainly," said Miss Milton, breathing very hard as though she had been running a long distance. "I was keeping it for your mother."

"Well, I'm damned," said Johnny. "I beg your pardon, Miss Brandon,...but I never heard such a thing. Does my mother pay a larger subscription than other people?"

"Certainly not."

"Then what right had you to tell Miss Brandon a lie?"

Miss Milton, in spite of long training in the kind of warfare attaching, of necessity, to Circulating Libraries, was very near to tears--also murder. She would have been delighted to pierce Joan's heart with a bright stiletto, had such a weapon been handy. She saw the softest, easiest, idlest job in the world slipping out of her fingers; she saw herself, a desolate and haggard virgin, begging her bread on the Polchester streets. She saw...but never mind her visions. They were terrible ones. She had recourse to her only defence.

"If I have misunderstood my duty," she said in a trembling voice, "there is the Library Committee."

"Oh, never mind," said Joan whose anger had disappeared. "It doesn't matter a bit. We'll have the book after Lady St. Leath."

"Indeed you won't," said Johnny, seizing the volume and forcing it upon Joan. "Mother can wait. I never heard of such a thing." He turned fiercely upon Miss Milton. "My mother shall know exactly what has happened. I'm sure she'd be horrified if she understood that you were keeping books from other subscribers in order that she might have them.... Good afternoon."

He strode from the room. At the door he paused.

"Can I--Shall we--Are you going down the High Street, Miss Brandon?"

"Yes," said Joan. They went out of the room and down the Library steps together.

In the shiny, sunny street they paused. The dark cobwebs of the Library hung behind Joan's consciousness like the sudden breaking of a mischievous spell.

She was so happy that she could have embraced Andrew, who was, however, already occupied with the distant aura of a white poodle on the other side of the street.

Johnny was driven by the impulse of his indignation down the hill. Joan, rather breathlessly, followed him.

"I say!" said Johnny. "Did you ever hear of such a woman! She ought to be poisoned. She ought indeed. No, poisoning's too good for her. Hung, drawn and quartered. That's what she ought to be. She'll get into trouble over that."

"Oh no," said Joan. "Please, Lord St. Leath, don't say any more about it. She has a difficult time, I expect, everybody wanting the same books. After all a promise is a promise."

"But she'd promised your mother----"

"No, she never really did. She always said that it would be in in a day or two. She never properly promised. I expect we'd have had it next."

"The snob, the rotten snob!" Johnny paused and raised his stick. "I hate women like that. No, she's not doing her job properly. She oughtn't to be there."

So swift had been their descent that they arrived in a moment at the market.

Because to-day was market-day there was a fine noise, confusion and splendour--carts rattling in and out, sheep and cows driven hither and thither, the wooden stalls bright with flowers and vegetables, the dim arcades looming behind the square filled with mysterious riches. They could not talk very much here, and Joan was glad. She was too deeply excited to talk. At one moment St. Leath took her arm to guide her past a confused mob of bewildered sheep. The Glebeshire peasant on marketing-day has plenty of conversation. Old wrinkled women, stout red-faced farmers, boys and girls all shouted together, and above the scene the light driving clouds flung their transparent shadows, like weaving shuttles across the sun.

"Oh, do let's stop here a moment," said Joan, peering into one of the arcades. "I've always loved this one all my life. I've never been able to resist it."

This was the Toy Arcade, now, I'm afraid, gone the way of so many other romantic things. It had been to all of us the most wonderful spot in Polchester from the very earliest days, this partly because of the toys themselves, partly because it was the densest and darkest of all the Arcades, never utterly to be pierced by our youthful eyes, partly because only two doors away were the sinister rooms of Mr. Dawson, the dentist. Here not only was there every kind of toy--dolls, soldiers, horses, carts, games, tops, hoops, dogs, elephants--but also sweets--chocolates, jujubes, caramels, and the best sweet in the whole world, the Polchester Bull's- eye.

They went in together. Mrs. Magnet, now with God, an old woman like a berry, always in a bonnet with green flowers, smiled and bobbed. The colours of the toys jumbled against the dark walls were like patterns in a carpet.

"What do you say, Miss Brandon?" said Johnny. "If I give you a toy will you give me one?"

"Yes," said Joan, afraid a little of Mrs. Magnet's piercing black eye.

"You're not to see what I get. Turn your back a moment."

Joan turned around. As she waited she could hear the "Hie!...Hie! Woah!" of the market-cries, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing of a cow.

"Here you are, then." She turned. He presented her with a Japanese doll, gay in a pink cotton frock, his waist girdled with a sash of gold tissue.

"Now you turn your back," she said.

In a kind of happy desperation she seized a nigger with bold red checks, a white jacket and crimson trousers.

Mrs. Magnet wrapped the presents up. They paid, and walked out into the sun again.

"I'll keep that doll," said Johnny, "just as long as you keep yours."

"Good-bye," said Joan hurriedly. "I've got to call at a house on the other side of the market.... Good-bye."

She felt the pressure of his hand on hers, then, clutching her parcel, hurried, almost ran, indeed, through the market-stalls. She did not look back.

When she had crossed the Square she turned down into a little side street. The plan of Polchester is very simple. It is built, as it were, on the side of a rock, running finally to a flat top, on which is the Cathedral. Down the side of the rock there are broad ledges, and it is on one of these that the market-place is built. At the bottom of the rock lies the jumble of cottages known most erroneously as Seatown, and round the rock runs the river Pol, slipping away at last through woods and hills and valleys into the sea. At high tide you can go all the way by river to the sea, and in the summer, this makes a pleasant and beautiful excursion. It is because of this that Seatown has, perhaps, some right to its name, because in one way and another sailors collect in the cottages and at the "Dog and Pilchard," that pleasant and democratic hostelry of which, in 1897, Samuel Hogg was landlord. Many visitors have been known to declare that Seatown was "too sweet for anything," and that "it would be really wicked to knock down the ducks of cottages," but "the ducks of cottages" were the foulest and most insanitary dwelling-places in the south of England, and it has always been to me amazing that the Polchester Town Council allowed them to stand so long as they did. In 1902, as all the Glebeshire world knows, there was the great battle of Seatown, ending in the cottages' destruction. In 1897 those evil dwelling-places gloried in their full magnificence of sweet corruption, nor did the periodical attacks of typhoid alarm in the least the citizens of the Upper Town. Once and again gentlemen from other parts paid mysterious official visits, but we had ways, in old times, of dealing with inquisitive meddlers from the outside world.

Because the market-place was half-way down the Rock, and because the Rectory of St. James' was just below the market-place, the upper windows of that house commanded a wonderful view both of the hill, High Street and Cathedral above it, and of Seatown, river and woods below it. It was said that it was up this very rocky street from the river, through the market, and up the High Street that the armed enemies of the Black Bishop had fought their way to the Cathedral on that great day when the Bishop had gone to meet his God, and a piece of rock is still shown to innocent visitors as the place whence some of his enemies, in full armour, were flung down, many thousand feet, to the waters of the Pol.

Joan had often longed to see the view from the windows of St. James' Rectory, but she had not known old Dr. Burroughs, the former Rector, a cross man with gout and rheumatism. She walked up some steps and found the house the last of three all squeezed together on the edge of the hill. The Rectory, because it was the last, stood square to all the winds of heaven, and Joan fancied what it must be in wild wintry weather. Soon she was in the drawing-room shaking hands with Miss Burnett, who was Mr. Morris' sister-in-law, and kept house for him.

Miss Burnett was a stout negative woman, whose whole mind was absorbed in the business of housekeeping, prices of food, wickedness and ingratitude of servants, maliciousness of shopkeepers and so on. The house, with all her managing, was neither tidy nor clean, as Joan quickly saw; Miss Burnett was not, by temperament, methodical, nor had she ever received any education. Her mind, so far as a perception of the outside world and its history went, was some way behind that of a Hottentot or a South Sea Islander. She had, from the day of her birth, been told by every one around her that she was stupid, and, after a faint struggle, she had acquiesced in that judgment. She knew that her younger sister, afterwards Mrs. Morris, was pretty and accomplished, and that she would never be either of those things. She was not angry nor jealous at this. The note of her character was acquiescence, and when Agatha had died of pleurisy it had seemed the natural thing for her to come and keep house for the distressed widower. If Mr. Morris had since regretted the arrangement he had, at any rate, never said so.

Miss Burnett's method of conversation was to say something about the weather and then to lapse into a surprised and distressed stare. If her visitor made some statement she crowned it with, "Well, now, that was just was I was going to say."

Her nose, when she talked, twinkled at the nostrils apprehensively, and many of her visitors found this fascinating, so that they suddenly, with hot confusion, realised that they too had been staring in a most offensive manner. Joan had not been out in the world long enough to enable her to save a difficult situation by brilliant talk, and she very quickly found herself staring at Miss Burnett's nose and longing to say something about it, as, for instance, "What a stronge nose you've got, Miss Burnett--see how it twitches!" or, "If you'll allow me, Miss Burnett, I'd just like to study your nose for a minute." When she realised this horrible desire in herself she blushed crimson and gazed about the untidy and entangled drawing-room in real desperation. She could see nothing in the room that was likely to save her. She was about to rise and depart, although she had only been there five minutes, when Mr. Morris came in.

Joan realised at once that this man was quite different from any one whom she had ever known. He was a stranger to her Polchester world in body, soul and spirit, as though, a foreigner from some far-distant country, he had been shipwrecked and cast upon an inhospitable shore. So strangely did she feel this that she was quite surprised when he did not speak with a foreign accent. "Oh, he must be a poet!" was her second thought about Mr. Morris, not because he dressed oddly or had long hair. She could not tell whence the impression came, unless it were in his strange, bewildered, lost blue eyes. Lost, bewildered--yes, that was what he was! With every movement of his slim, straight body, the impulse with which he brushed back his untidy fair hair from his forehead, he seemed like a man only just awake, a man needing care and protection, because he simply would not be able to look after himself. So ridiculously did she have this impression that she almost cried "Look out!" when he moved forward, as though he would certainly knock himself against a chair or a table.

"How strange," she thought, "that this man should live with Miss Burnett! What does he think of her?" She was excited by her discovery of him, but that meant very little, because just now she was being excited by everything. She found at once that talking to him was the easiest thing in the world. Mr. Morris did not say very much; he smiled gently, and when Miss Burnett, awaking suddenly from her torpor, said, "You'll have some tea, Miss Brandon, won't you?" he, smiling, softly repeated the invitation.

"Thank you," said Joan. "I will. How strange it is," she went on, "that you are so close to the market and, even on market-day, you don't hear a sound!"

And it was strange! as though the house were bewitched and had suddenly, even as Joan entered it, gathered around it a dark wood for its protection.

"Yes," said Mr. Morris. "We found it strange at first. But it's because we are the last house, and the three others protect us. We get the wind and rain, though. You should hear this place in a storm. But the house is strong enough; it's very stoutly built; not a board creaks in the wildest weather. Only the windows rattle and the wind comes roaring down the chimneys."

"How long have you been here?" asked Joan.

"Nearly a year--and we still feel strangers. We were near Ashford in Kent for twelve years, and the Glebeshire people are very different."

"Well," said Joan, who was a little irritated because she felt that his voice was a little sadder than it ought to be, "I think you'll like Polchester. I'm sure you will. And you've come in a good year, too. There's sure to be a lot going on this year because of the Jubilee."

Mr. Morris did not seem to be as thrilled as he should be by the thought of the Jubilee, so Joan went on:

"It's so lucky for us that it comes just at the Polchester Feast time. We always have a tremendous week at the Feast--the Horticultural Show and a Ball in the Assembly Rooms, and all sorts of things. It's going to be my first ball this year, although I've really come out already." She laughed. "Festivities start to-morrow with the arrival of Marquis."

"Marquis?" repeated Mr. Morris politely.

"Oh, don't you know Marquis? His is the greatest Circus in England. He comes to Polchester every year, and they have a procession through the town--elephants and camels, and Britannia in her chariot, and sometimes a cage with the lions and the tigers. Last year they had the sweetest little ponies--four of them, no higher than St. Bernards--and there are the clowns too, and a band."

She was suddenly afraid that she was talking too much--silly too, in her childish enthusiasms. She remembered that she was in reality deputising for her mother, who would never have talked about the Circus. Fortunately at that moment the tea came in; it was brought by a flushed and contemptuous maid, who put the tray down on a little table with a bang, tossed her head as though she despised them all, and slammed the door behind her.

Miss Burnett was upset by this, and her nose twitched more violently than ever. Joan saw that her hand trembled as she poured out the tea, and she was at once sorry for her.

Mr. Morris talked about Kent and London, and tea was drunk and the saffron cake praised, and Joan thought it was time to go. At the last, however, she turned to Mr. Morris and said:

"Do you like the Cathedral?"

"It's wonderful," he answered. "You should see it from our window upstairs."

"Oh, I hate it--" said Joan.

"Why?" Morris asked her.

There was a curious challenge in his voice. They were both standing facing one another.

"I suppose that's a silly thing to say. Only you don't live as close to it as we do, and you haven't lived here so long as we have. It seems to hang right over you, and it never changes, and I hate to think it will go on just the same, years after we're dead."

"Have you seen the view from our window?" Morris asked her.

"No," said Joan, "I was never in this house before."

"Come and see it," he said.

"I'm sure," said Miss Burnett heavily, "Miss Brandon doesn't want to be bothered--when she's seen the Cathedral all her life, too."

"Of course I'd love to see it," said Joan, laughing. "To tell you the truth, that's what I've always wanted. I looked at this house again and again when old Canon Burroughs was here, and thought there must be a wonderful view."

She said good-bye to Miss Burnett.

"My mother does hope you will soon come and see us," she said.

"I have just met Mrs. Brandon for a moment at Mrs. Combermere's," said Mr. Morris. "We'll be very glad to come."

She went out with him.

"It's up these stairs," he said. "Two flights. I hope you don't mind."

They climbed on to the second landing. At the end of the passage there was a window. The evening was grey and only little faint wisps of blue still lingered above the dusk, but the white sky threw up the Cathedral towers, now black and sharp-edged in magnificent relief. Truly it was a view!

The window was in such a position that through it you gazed behind the neighbouring houses, above some low roofs, straight up the twisting High Street to the Cathedral. The great building seemed to be perched on the very edge of the rock, almost, you felt, swinging in mid-air, and that so precariously that with one push of the finger you might send it staggering into space. Joan had never seen it so dominating, so commanding, so fierce in its disregard of the tiny clustered world beneath it, so near to the stars, so majestic and alone.

"Yes--it's wonderful," she said.

"Oh, but you should see it," he cried, "as it can be. It's dull to-day, the sky's grey and there's no sunset,--but when it's flaming red with all the windows shining, or when all the stars are out or in moonlight... it's like a great ship sometimes, and sometimes like a cloud, and sometimes like a fiery palace. Sometimes it's in mist and you can only see just the top of the towers...."

"I don't like it," said Joan, turning away. "It doesn't care what happens to us."

"Why should it?" he answered. "Think of all it's seen--the battles and the fights and the plunder--and it doesn't care! We can do what we like and it will remain just the same."

"People could come and knock it down," Joan said.

"I believe it would still be there if they did. The rock would be there and the spirit of the Cathedral.... What do people matter beside a thing like that? Why, we're ants...!"

He stopped suddenly.

"You'll think me foolish, Miss Brandon," he said. "You have known the Cathedral so long----" He paused. "I think I know what you mean about fearing it----"

He saw her to the door.

"Good-bye," he said, smiling. "Come again."

"I like him," she thought as she walked away. What a splendid day she had had!

Chapter IV

The Impertinent Elephant

Archdeacon Brandon had surmounted with surprising celerity the shock of Falk's unexpected return. He was helped to this firstly by his confident belief in a God who had him especially in His eye and would, on no account, do him any harm. As God had decided that Falk had better leave Oxford, it was foolish to argue that it would have been wiser for him to stay there. Secondly, he was helped by his own love for, and pride in, his son. The independence and scorn that were so large a part of Falk's nature were after his own heart. He might fight and oppose them (he often did), but always behind the contest there was appreciation and approbation. That was the way for a son of his to treat the world--to snap his fingers at it! The natural thing to do, the good old world being as stupid as it was. Thirdly, he was helped by his family pride. It took him only a night's reflection to arrive at the decision that Falk had been entirely right in this affair and Oxford entirely in the wrong. Two days after Falk's return he wrote (without saying anything to the boy) Falk's tutor a very warm letter, pointing out that he was sure the tutor would agree with him that a little more tact and diplomacy might have prevented so unfortunate an issue. It was not for him, Brandon, to suggest that the authorities in Oxford were perhaps a little behind the times, a little out of the world. Nevertheless it was probably true that long residence in Oxford had hindered the aforesaid authorities from realising the trend of the day, from appreciating the new spirit of independence that was growing up in our younger generation. It seemed obvious to him, Archdeacon Brandon, that you could no longer treat men of Falk's age and character as mere boys and, although he was quite sure that the authorities at Oxford had done their best, he nevertheless hoped that this unfortunate episode would enable them to see that we were not now living in the Middle Ages, but rather in the last years of the nineteenth century. It may seem to some a little ironical that the Archdeacon, who was the most conservative soul alive, should write thus to one of the most conservative of our institutions, but--"Before Oxford the Brandons were...."

What the tutor remarked when he read this letter is not recorded. Brandon said nothing to Falk about all this. Indeed, during the first weeks after Falk's return he preserved a stern and dignified silence. After all, the boy must learn that authority was authority, and he prided himself that he knew, better than any number of Oxford Dons, how to train and educate the young. Nevertheless light broke through. Some of Falk's jokes were so good that his father, who had a real sense of fun if only a slight sense of humour, was bound to laugh. Very soon father and son resumed their old relations of sudden tempers and mutual admiration, and a strange, rather pathetic, quite uneloquent love that was none the less real because it was, on either side, completely selfish.

But there was a fourth reason why Falk's return caused so slight a storm. That reason was that the Archdeacon was now girding up his loins before he entered upon one of his famous campaigns. There had been many campaigns in the past. Campaigns were indeed as truly the breath of the Archdeacon's nostrils as they had been once of the great Napoleon's--and in every one of them had the Archdeacon been victorious.

This one was to be the greatest of them all, and was to set the sign and seal upon the whole of his career.

It happened that, three miles out of Polchester, there was a little village known as Pybus St. Anthony. A very beautiful village it was, with orchards and a stream and old-world cottages and a fine Norman church. But not for its orchards nor its stream nor its church was it famous. It was famous because for many years its listing had been regarded as one of the most important in the whole diocese of Polchester. It was the tradition that the man who went to Pybus St. Anthony had the world in front of him. When likely men for preferment were looked for it was to Pybus St. Anthony that men looked. Heaven alone knows how many Canons and Archdeacons had made their first bow there to the Glebeshire world! Three Deans and a Bishop had, at different times, made it their first stepping-stone to fame. Canon Morrison (Honorary Canon of the Cathedral) was its present incumbent. Less intellectual than some of the earlier incumbents, he was nevertheless a fine fellow. He had been there only three years when symptoms of cancer of the throat had appeared. He had been operated on in London, and at first it had seemed that he would recover. Then the dreaded signs had reappeared; he had wished, poor man, to surrender the living, but because there was yet hope the Chapter, in whose gift the living was, had insisted on his remaining.

A week ago, however, he had collapsed. It was feared now that at any moment he might die. The Archdeacon was very sorry for Morrison. He liked him, and was deeply touched by his tragedy; nevertheless one must face facts; it was probable that at any moment now the Chapter would be forced to make a new appointment.

He had been aware--he did not disguise it from himself in the least--for some time now of the way that the appointment must go. There was a young man, the Rev. Rex Forsyth by name, who, in his judgment, could be the only possible man. Young Forsyth was, at the present moment, chaplain to the Bishop of St. Minworth. St. Minworth was only a Suffragan Bishopric, and it could not honestly be said that there was a great deal for Mr. Forsyth to do there. But it was not because the Archdeacon thought that the young man ought to have more to do that he wished to move him to Pybus St. Anthony. Far from it! The Archdeacon, in the deep secrecy of his own heart, could not honestly admit that young Forsyth was a very hard worker --he liked hunting and whist and a good bottle of wine...he was that kind of man.

Where, then, were his qualifications as Canon Morrison's successor? Well, quite honestly--and the Archdeacon was one of the honestest men alive--his qualifications belonged more especially to his ancestors rather than to himself. In the Archdeacon's opinion there had been too many clever men of Pybus. Time now for a normal man. Morrison was normal and Forsyth would be more normal still.

He was in fact first cousin to young Johnny St. Leath and therefore a very near relation of the Countess herself. His father was the fourth son of the Earl of Trewithen, and, as every one knows, the Trewithens and the St. Leaths are, for all practical purposes, one and the same family, and divide Glebeshire between them. No one ever quite knew what young Rex Forsyth became a parson for. Some people said he did it for a wager; but however true that might be, he was not very happy with dear old Bishop Clematis and very ready for preferment.

Now the Archdeacon was no snob; he believed in men and women who had long and elaborate family-trees simply because he believed in institutions and because it had always seemed to him a quite obvious fact that the longer any one or anything remained in a place the more chance there was of things being done as they always had been done. It was not in the least because she was a Countess that he thought the old Lady St. Leath a wonderful woman; not wonderful for her looks certainly--no one could call her a beautiful woman--and not wonderful for her intelligence; the Archdeacon had frequently been compelled to admit to himself that she was a little on the stupid side--but wonderful for her capacity for staying where she was like a rock and allowing nothing whatever to move her. In these dangerous days--and what dangerous days they were!--the safety of the country simply depended on a few such figures as the Countess. Queen Victoria was another of them, and for her the Archdeacon had a real and very touching devotion. Thank God he would be able to show a little of it in the prominent part he intended to play in the Polchester Jubilee festivals this year!

Any one could see then that to have young Rex Forsyth close at hand at Pybus St. Anthony was the very best possible thing for the good of Polchester. Lady St. Leath saw it, Mrs. Combermere saw it, Mrs. Sampson saw it, and young Forsyth himself saw it. The Archdeacon entirely failed to understand how there could be any one who did not see it. However, he was afraid that there were one or two in Polchester.... People said that young Forsyth was stupid! Perhaps he was not very bright; all the easier then to direct him in the way that he should go, and throw his forces into the right direction. People said that he cared more for his hunting and his whist than for his work--well, he was young and, at any rate, there was none of the canting hypocrite about him. The Archdeacon hated canting hypocrites!

There had been signs, once and again, of certain anarchists and devilish fellows, who crept up and down the streets of Polchester spreading their wicked mischief, their lying and disintegrating ideas. The Archdeacon was determined to fight them to the very last breath in his body, even as the Black Bishop before him had fought his enemies. And the Archdeacon had no fear of his victory.

Rex Forsyth at Pybus St. Anthony would be a fine step forward. Have one of these irreligious radicals there, and Heaven alone knew what harm he might wreak. No, Polchester must be saved. Let the rest of the world go to pieces, Polchester would be preserved.

On how many earlier occasions had the Archdeacon surveyed the Chapter, considered it in all its details and weighed up judiciously the elements, good and bad, that composed it. How well he knew them all! First the Dean, mild and polite and amiable, his mind generally busy with his beloved flora and fauna, his flowers and his butterflies, very easy indeed to deal with. Then Archdeacon Witheram, most nobly conscientious, a really devout man, taking his work with a seriousness that was simply admirable, but glued to the details of his own half of the diocese, so that broader and larger questions did not concern him very closely. Bentinck-Major next. The Archdeacon flattered himself that he knew Bentinck-Major through and through--his snobbery, his vanity, his childish pleasure in his position and his cook, his vanity in his own smart appearance! It would be difficult to find words adequate for the scorn with which the Archdeacon regarded that elegant little man. Then Byle, the Precentor. He was, to some extent, an unknown quantity. His chief characteristic perhaps was his hatred of quarrels--he would say or do anything if only he might not be drawn into a "row." "Peace at any price" was his motto, and this, of course, as with the famous Vicar of Bray, involved a good deal of insincerity. The Archdeacon knew that he could not trust him, but a masterful policy of terrorism had always been very successful. Ryle was frankly frightened by the Archdeacon, and a very good thing too! Might he long remain so! Lastly there was Foster, the Diocesan Missioner. Let it be said at once that the Archdeacon hated Foster. Foster had been a thorn in the Archdeacon's side ever since his arrival in Polchester--a thin, shambly-kneed, untidy, pale-faced prig, that was what Foster was! The Archdeacon hated everything about him--his grey hair, his large protruding ears, the pimple on the end of his nose, the baggy knees to his trousers, his thick heavy hands that never seemed to be properly washed.

Nevertheless beneath that hatred the Archdeacon was compelled to a reluctant admiration. The man was fearless, a fanatic if you please, but devoted to his religion, believing in it with a fervour and sincerity that nothing could shake. An able man too, the best preacher in the diocese, better read in every kind of theology than any clergyman in Glebeshire. It was especially for his open mind about new religious ideas that the Archdeacon mistrusted him. No opinion, however heterodox, shocked him. He welcomed new thought and had himself written a book, Christ and the Gospels, that for its learning and broad-mindedness had created a considerable stir. But he was a dull dog, never laughed, never even smiled, lived by himself and kept to himself. He had, in the past, opposed every plan of the Archdeacon's, and opposed it relentlessly, but he was always, thanks to the Archdeacon's efforts, in a minority. The other Canons disliked him; the old Bishop, safely tucked away in his Palace at Carpledon, was, except for his satellite Rogers, his only friend in Polchester.

So much for the Chapter. There was now only one unknown element in the situation--Ronder. Ronder's position was important because he was Treasurer to the Cathedral. His predecessor, Hart-Smith, now promoted to the Deanery of Norwich, had been an able man, but one of the old school, a great friend of Brandon's, seeing eye to eye with him in everything. The Archdeacon then had had his finger very closely upon the Cathedral purse, and Hart-Smith's departure had been a very serious blow. The appointment of the new Canon had been in the hands of the Crown, and Brandon had, of course, had nothing to say to it. However, one glance at Ronder--he had seen him and spoken to him at the Dean's a few days after his arrival--had reassured him. Here, surely, was a man whom he need not fear--an easy, good-natured, rather stupid fellow by the look of him. Brandon hoped to have his finger on the Cathedral purse as tightly in a few weeks' time as he had had it before.

And all this was in no sort of fashion for the Archdeacon's personal advancement or ambition. He was contented with Polchester, and quite prepared to live there for the rest of his days and be buried, with proper ceremonies, when his end came. With all his soul he loved the Cathedral, and if he regarded himself as the principal factor in its good governance and order he did so with a sort of divine fatalism--no credit to him that it was so. Let credit be given to the Lord God who had seen fit to make him what he was and to place in his hands that great charge.

His fault in the matter was, perhaps, that he took it all too simply, that he regarded these men and the other figures in Polchester exactly as he saw them, did not believe that they could ever be anything else. As God had created the world, so did Brandon create Polchester as nearly in his own likeness as might be--there they all were and there, please God, they would all be for ever!

Bending his mind then to this new campaign, he thought that he would go and see the Dean. He knew by this time, he fancied, exactly how to prepare the Dean's mind for the proper reception of an idea, although, in truth, he was as simple over his plots and plans as a child brick-building in its nursery.

About three o'clock one afternoon he prepared to sally forth. The Dean's house was on the other side of the Cathedral, and you had to go down the High Street and then to the left up Orange Street to get to it, an irrational roundabout proceeding that always irritated the Archdeacon. Very splendid he looked, his top-hat shining, his fine high white collar, his spotless black clothes, his boots shapely and smart. (He and Bentinck- Major were, I suppose, the only two clergymen in Polchester who used boot- trees.) But his smartness was in no way an essential with him. Clothed in rags he would still have the grand air. "I often think of him," Miss Dobell once said, "as one of those glorious gondoliers in Venice. How grand he would look!"

However that might be, it is beyond question that the ridiculous clothes that a clergyman of the Church of England is compelled to wear did not make him absurd, nor did he look an over-dressed fop like Bentinck-Major.

Miss Dobell's gondolier was, on this present occasion, in an excellent temper; and meeting his daughter Joan, he felt very genial towards her. Joan had observed, several days before, that the family crisis might be said to be past, and very thankful she was.

She had, at this time, her own happy dreams, so that father and daughter, moved by some genial impulse, stopped and kissed.

"There! my dear!" said the Archdeacon. "And what are you doing this afternoon, Joan?"

"I'm going with mother," she said, "to see Miss Ronder. It's time we called, you know."

"I suppose it is." Brandon patted her cheek. "Everything you want?"

"Yes, father, thank you."

"That's right."

He left the house, humming a little tune. On the second step he paused, as he was in the habit of doing, and surveyed the Precincts--the houses with their shining knockers, their old-fashioned bow-windows and overhanging portals, the Cathedral Green, and the towering front of the Cathedral itself. He was, for a moment, a kind of presiding deity over all this. He loved it and believed in it and trusted it exactly as though it had been the work of his own hands. Halfway towards the Arden Gate he overtook poor old shambling Canon Morphew, who really ought, in the Archdeacon's opinion, to have died long ago. However, as he hadn't died the Archdeacon felt kindly towards him, and he had, when he talked to the old man, a sense of beneficence and charity very warming to the heart.

"Well, Morphew, enjoying the sun?"

Canon Morphew always started when any one spoke to him, being sunk all day deep in dreams of his own, dreams that had their birth somewhere in the heart of the misty dirty rooms where his books were piled ceiling-high and papers blew about the floor.

"Good afternoon...good afternoon, Archdeacon. Pray forgive me. You came upon me unawares."

Brandon moderated his manly stride to the other's shuffling steps.

"Hope you've had none of that tiresome rheumatism troubling you again."

"Rheumatism? Just a twinge--just a twinge.... It belongs to my time of life."

"Oh, don't say that!" The Archdeacon laughed his hearty laugh. "You've many years in front of you yet."

"No, I haven't--and you don't mean it, Archdeacon--you know you don't. A few months perhaps--that's all. The Lord's will be done. But there's a piece of work...a piece of work...."

He ran off into incoherent mumblings. Suddenly, just as they reached the dark shadows of the Arden Gate, he seemed to wake up. His voice was quite vigorous, his eyes, tired and worn as they were, bravely scanned Brandon's health and vigour.

"We all come to it, you know. Yes, we do. The very strongest of us. You're a young man, Archdeacon, by my years, and I hope you may long live to continue your good work in this place. All the same, you'll be old yourself one day. No one escapes.... No one escapes...."

"Well, good-day to you," said the Archdeacon hurriedly. "Good-day to you.... Hope this bright weather continues," and started rather precipitately down the hill, leaving Morphew to find his way by himself.

His impetuosity was soon restrained. He tumbled immediately into a crowd, and pulling himself up abruptly and looking down the High Street he saw that the pavement on both sides of the street was black with people. He was not a man who liked to be jostled, and he was the more uncomfortable in that he discovered that his immediate neighbour was Samuel Hogg, the stout and rubicund landlord of the "Dog and Pilchard" of Seatown. With him was his pretty daughter Annie. Near to them were Mr. John Curtis and Mr. Samuel Croppet, two of the Town Councillors. With none of these gentlemen did the Archdeacon wish to begin a conversation.

And yet it was difficult to know what to do. The High Street pavements were narrow, and the crowd seemed continually to increase. There was a good deal of pushing and laughter and boisterous good-humour. To return up the street again seemed to have something ignominious about it. Brandon decided to satisfy his curiosity, support his dignity and indulge his amiability by staying where he was.

"Good afternoon, Hogg," he said. "What's the disturbance for?"

"Markisses Circus, sir," Hogg lifted his face like a large round sun. "Surely you'd 'eard of it, Archdeacon?"

"Well, I didn't know," said Brandon in his most gracious manner, "that it was this afternoon.... Of course, how stupid of me!"

He smiled round good-naturedly upon them all, and they all smiled back upon him. He was a popular figure in the town; it was felt that his handsome face and splendid presence did the town credit. Also, he always knew his own mind. And he was no coward.

He nodded to Curtis and Croppet and then stared in front of him, a fixed genial smile on his face, his fine figure triumphant in the sun. He looked as though he were enjoying himself and was happy because he liked to see his fellow-creatures happy; in reality he was wondering how he could have been so foolish as to forget Marquis' Circus. Why had not Joan said something to him about it? Very careless of her to place him in this unfortunate position.

He looked around him, but he could see no other dignitary of the Church close at hand. How tiresome--really, how tiresome! Moreover, as the timed moment of the procession arrived the crowd increased, and he was now most uncomfortably pressed against other people. He felt a sharp little dig in his stomach, then, turning, found close beside him the flushed anxious, meagre little face of Samuel Bond, the Clerk of the Chapter. Bond's struggle to reach his dignified position in the town had been a severe one, and had only succeeded because of a multitude of self-submissions and abnegations, humilities and contempts, flatteries and sycophancies that would have tired and defeated a less determined soul. But, in the background, there were the figures of Mrs. Bond and four little Bonds to spur him forward. He adored his family. "Whatever I am, I'm a family man," was one of his favourite sayings. In so worthy a cause much sycophancy may be forgiven him. To no one, however, was he so completely sycophantic as to the Archdeacon. He was terrified of the Archdeacon; he would wake up in the middle of the night and think of him, then tremble and cower under the warm protection of Mrs. Bond until sleep rescued him once more.

It was natural, therefore, that however numerous the people in Polchester might be whom the Archdeacon despised, he despised little Bond most of all. And here was little Bond pressed up against him, with the large circumference of the cheerful Mr. Samuel Hogg near by, and the ironical town smartness of Messrs. Curtis and Croppet close at hand. Truly a horrible position.

"Ah, Archdeacon! I didn't see you--indeed I didn't!" The little breathless voice was like a child's penny whistle blown ignorantly. "Just fancy!-- meeting you like this! Hot, isn't it, although it's only February. Yes.... Hot indeed. I didn't know you cared for processions, Archdeacon----"

"I don't," said Brandon. "I hadn't realised that there was a procession. Stupidly, I had forgotten----"

"Well, well," came the good-natured voice of Mr. Hogg. "It'll do us no harm, Archdeacon--no harm at all. I forget whether you rightly know my little girl. This is Annie--come out to see the procession with her father."

The Archdeacon was compelled to shake hands. He did it very graciously. She was certainly a fine girl--tall, strong, full-breasted, with dark colour and raven black hair; curious, her eyes, very large and bright. They stared full at you, but past you, as though they had decided that you were of insufficient interest.

Annie thus gazed at the Archdeacon and said no word. Any further intimacies were prevented by approach of the procession. To the present generation Marquis' Circus would not appear, I suppose, very wonderful. To many of us, thirty years ago, it seemed the final expression of Oriental splendour and display.

There were murmurs and cries of "Here they come! Here they come! 'Ere they be!" Every one pressed forward; Mr. Bond was nearly thrown off his feet and caught at the lapel of the Archdeacon's coat to save himself. Only the huge black eyes of Annie Hogg displayed no interest. The procession had started from the meadows beyond the Cathedral and, after discreetly avoiding the Precincts, was to plunge down the High Street, pass through the Market-place and vanish up Orange Street--to follow, in fact, the very path that the Archdeacon intended to pursue.

A band could be heard, there was an astounded hush (the whole of the High Street holding its breath), then the herald appeared.

He was, perhaps, a rather shabby fellow, wearing the tarnished red and gold of many a procession, but he walked confidently, holding in his hand a tall wooden truncheon gay with paper-gilt, having his round cap of cloth of gold set rakishly on one side of his head. After him came the band, also in tarnished cloth of gold and looking as though they would have been a trifle ashamed of themselves had they not been deeply involved in the intricacies of their music. After the band came four rather shabby riders on horseback, then some men dressed apparently in admiring imitation of Charles II.; then, to the wonder and whispered incredulity of the crowd, Britannia on her triumphal car. The car--an elaborate cart, with gilt wheels and strange cardboard figures of dolphins and Father Neptune--had in its centre a high seat painted white and perched on a kind of box. Seated on this throne was Britannia herself--a large, full-bosomed, flaxen-haired lady in white flowing robes, and having a very anxious expression of countenance, as, indeed, poor thing, was natural enough, because the cart rocked the box and the box yet more violently rocked the chair. At any moment, it seemed, might she be precipitated, a fallen goddess, among the crowd, and the fact that the High Street was on a slope of considerable sharpness did not add to her ease and comfort. Two stout gentlemen, perspiration bedewing their foreheads, strove to restrain the ponies, and their classic clothing, that turned them into rather tattered Bacchuses, did not make them less incongruous.

Britannia and her agony, however, were soon forgotten in the ferocious excitements that followed her. Here were two camels, tired and dusty, with that look of bored and indifferent superiority that belongs to their tribe, two elephants, two clowns, and last, but of course the climax of the whole affair, a cage in which there could be seen behind the iron bars a lion and a lioness, jolted haplessly from side to side, but too deeply shamed and indignant to do more than reproach the crowd with their burning eyes. Finally, another clown bearing a sandwich-board on which was printed in large red letters "Marquis' Circus--the Finest in the World--Renowned through Europe--Come to the Church Meadows and see the Fun"--and so on.

As this glorious procession passed down the High Street the crowd expressed its admiration in silent whispering. There was no loud applause; nevertheless, Mr. Marquis, were he present, must have felt the air electric with praise. It was murmured that Britannia was Mrs. Marquis, and, if that were true, she must have given her spouse afterwards, in the sanctity of their privacy, a very grateful account of her reception.

When the band had passed a little way down the street and their somewhat raucous notes were modified by distance, the sun came out in especial glory, as though to take his own peep at the show, the gilt and cloth of gold shone and gleamed, the chair of Britannia rocked as though it were bursting with pride, and the Cathedral bells, as though they too wished to lend their dignified blessing to the scene, began to ring for Evensong. A sentimental observer, had he been present, might have imagined that the old town was glad to have once again an excuse for some display, and preened itself and showed forth its richest and warmest colours and wondered, perhaps, whether after all the drab and interesting citizens of to-day were not minded to return to the gayer and happier old times. Quite a noise, too, of chatter and trumpets and bells and laughter. Even the Archdeacon forgot his official smile and laughed like a boy.

It was then that the terrible thing happened. Somewhere at the lower end of the High Street the procession was held up and the chariot had suddenly to pull itself back upon its wheels, and the band were able to breathe freely for a minute, to gaze about them and to wipe the sweat from their brows; even in February blowing and thumping "all round the town" was a warm business.

Now, just opposite the Archdeacon were the two elephants, checked by the sudden pause. Behind them was the cage with the lions, who, now that the jolting had ceased, could collect their scattered indignities and roar a little in exasperated protest. The elephants, too, perhaps felt the humility of their position, accustomed though they might be to it by many years of sordid slavery. It may be, too, that the sight of that patronising and ignorant crowd, the crush and pack of the High Street, the silly sniggering, the triumphant jangle of the Cathedral bells, thrust through their slow and heavy brains some vision long faded now, but for an instant revived, of their green jungles, their hot suns, their ancient royalty and might. They realised perhaps a sudden instinct of their power, that they could with one lifting of the hoof crush these midgets that hemmed them in back to the pulp whence they came, and so go roaming and bellowing their freedom through the streets and ways of the city. The larger of the two suddenly raised his head and trumpeted; with his dim uplifted eyes he caught sight of the Archdeacon's rich and gleaming top- hat shining, as an emblem of the city's majesty, above the crowd. It gleamed in the sun, and he hated it. He trumpeted again and yet again, then, with a heavy lurching movement, stumbled towards the pavement, and with little fierce eyes and uplifted trunk heaved towards his enemies.

The crowd, with screams and cries, fell back in agitated confusion. The Archdeacon, caught by surprise, scarcely realising what had occurred, blinded a little by the sun, stood where he was. In another movement his top-hat was snatched from his head and tossed into air....

He felt the animal's hot breath upon his face, heard the shouts and cries around him, and, in very natural alarm, started back, caught at anything for safety (he had tumbled upon the broad and protective chest of Samuel Hogg), and had a general impression of whirling figures, of suns and roofs and shining faces and, finally, the high winds of heaven blowing upon his bare head.

In another moment the incident was closed. The courtier of Charles II. had rushed up; the elephant was pulled and hustled and kicked; for him swiftly the vision of power and glory and vengeance was over, and once again he was the tied and governed prisoner of modern civilisation. The top-hat lay, a battered and hapless remnant, beneath the feet of the now advancing procession.

Once the crowd realised that the danger was over a roar of laughter went up to heaven. There were shouts and cries. The Archdeacon tried to smile. He heard in dim confusion the cheery laugh of Samuel Hogg, he caught the comment of Croppet and the rest.

With only one thought that he must hide himself, indignation, humiliation, amazement that such a thing could be in his heart, he backed, turned, almost ran, finding at last sudden refuge in Bennett's book-shop. How wonderful was the dark rich security of that enclosure! The shop was always in a half-dusk and the gas burnt in its dim globes during most of the day. All the richer and handsomer gleamed the rows of volumes, the morocco and the leather and the cloth. Old Mr. Bennett himself, the son of the famous man who had known Scott and Byron, was now a prodigious age (in the town his nickname was Methusalem), but he still liked to sit in the shop in a high chair, his white beard in bright contrast with the chaste selection of the newest works arranged in front of him. He might himself have been the Spirit of Select Literature summoned out of the vasty deep by the Cultured Spirits of Polchester.

Into this splendid temple of letters the Archdeacon came, halted, breathless, bewildered, tumbled. He saw at first only dimly. He was aware that old Mr. Bennett, with an exclamation of surprise, rose in his chair. Then he perceived that two others were in the shop; finally, that these two were the Dean and Ronder, the men of all others in Polchester whom he least wished to find there.

"Archdeacon!" cried the Dean.

"Yes--om--ah--an extraordinary thing has occurred--I really--oh, thank you, Mr. Wilton...."

Mr. Frank Wilton, the young assistant, had offered a chair.

"You'll scarcely believe me--really, I can hardly believe myself." Here the Archdeacon tried to laugh. "As a matter of fact, I was coming out to see you...on my way...and the elephant..."

"The elephant?" repeated the Dean, who, in the way that he had, was nervously rubbing one gaitered leg against the other.

"Yes--I'm a little incoherent, I'm afraid. You must forgive me... breathless too.... It's too absurd. So many people..."

"A little glass of water, Mr. Archdeacon?" said young Wilton, who had a slight cast in one eye, and therefore gave the impression that he was watching round the corner to see that no one ran off with the books.

"No, thank you, Wilton.... No, thank you.... Very good of you, I'm sure. But really it was a monstrous thing. I was coming to see you, as I've just said, Dean, having forgotten all about this ridiculous procession. I was held up by the crowd just below the shop here. Then suddenly, as the animals were passing, the elephant made a lurch towards me--positively, I'm not exaggerating--seized my hat and--ran off with it!"

The Archdeacon had, as I have already said, a sense of fun. He saw, for the first time, the humour of the thing. He began to laugh; he laughed more loudly; laughter overtook him altogether, and he roared and roared again, sitting there, his hands on his knees, until the tears ran down his cheek.

"Oh dear...my hat...an elephant...Did you ever hear----? My best hat...!" The Dean was compelled to laugh too, although, being a shy and hesitating man, he was not able to do it very heartily. Young Mr. Wilton laughed, but in such a way as to show that he knew his place and was ready to be serious at once if his superiors wished it. Even old Mr. Bennett laughed as distantly and gently as befitted his great age.

Brandon was conscious of Ronder. He had, in fact, been conscious of him from the very instant of his first perception of him. He was giving himself away before their new Canon; he thought that the new Canon, although he was smiling pleasantly and was standing with becoming modesty in the background, looked superior....

The Archdeacon pulled himself up with a jerk. After all, it was nothing of a joke. A multitude of townspeople had seen him in a most ludicrous position, had seen him start back in terror before a tame elephant, had seen him frightened and hatless. No, there was nothing to laugh about.

"An elephant?" repeated the Dean, still gently laughing.

"Yes, an elephant," answered Brandon rather testily. That was enough of the affair, quite enough. "Well, I must be getting back. See you to- morrow, Dean."

"Anything important you wanted to see me about?" asked the Dean, perceiving that he had laughed just a little longer than was truly necessary.

"No, no...nothing. Only about poor Morrison. He's very bad, they tell me...a week at most."

"Dear, dear--is that so?" said the Dean. "Poor fellow, poor fellow!"

Brandon was now acutely conscious of Ronder. Why didn't the fellow say something instead of standing silently there with that superior look behind his glasses? In the ordinary way he would have greeted him with his usual hearty patronage. Now he was irritated. It was really most unfortunate that Ronder should have witnessed his humiliation. He rose, abruptly turning his back upon him. The fellow was laughing at him--he was sure of it.

"Well--good-day, good-day." As he advanced to the door and looked out into the street he was aware of the ludicrousness of going even a few steps up the street without a hat.

Confound Ronder!

But there was scarcely any one about now. The street was almost deserted. He peered up and down.

In the middle of the road was a small, shapeless, black object.

...His hat!

Chapter V

Mrs. Brandon Goes Out to Tea

Mrs. Brandon hated her husband. No one in Polchester had the slightest suspicion of this; certainly her husband least of all. She herself had been first aware of it one summer afternoon some five or six years ago when, very pleasantly and in the kindest way, he had told her that she knew nothing about primroses. They had been having tea at the Dean's, and, as was often the case then, the conversation had concerned itself with flowers and ferns. Mrs. Brandon was quite ready to admit that she knew nothing about primroses--there were for her yellow ones and other ones, and that was all. The Archdeacon had often before told her that she was ignorant, and she had acquiesced without a murmur. Upon this afternoon, just as Mrs. Sampson was asking her whether she liked sugar, revelation came to her. That little scene was often afterwards vividly in front of her--the Archdeacon, with his magnificent legs spread apart in front of the fireplace; Miss Dobell trying to look with wisdom upon a little bundle of primulas that the Dean was showing to her; the sunlight upon the lawn beyond the window; the rooks in the high elms busy with their nests; the May warmth striking through the misty air--all was painted for ever afterwards upon her mind.

"My dear, you may as well admit at once that you know nothing whatever about primroses."

"No, I'm afraid I don't--thank you, Mrs. Sampson. One lump, please."

She had been coming to it. Of course, a very long time before this--very, very far away, now an incredible memory, seemed the days when she had loved him so passionately that she almost died with anxiety if he left her for a single night. Almost too passionate it had been, perhaps. He himself was not capable of passionate love, or, at any rate, had been quite satisfied to be not passionately in love with her. He pursued other things--his career, his religion, his simple beneficence, his health, his vigour. His love for his son was the most passionately personal thing in him, and over that they might have met had he been able to conceive her as a passionate being. Her ignorance of life--almost complete when he had met her--had been but little diminished by her time with him. She knew now, after all those years, little more of the world and its terrors and blessings than she had known then. But she did know that nothing in her had been satisfied. She knew now of what she was capable, and it was perhaps the thought that he had, by taking her, prevented her fulfilment and complete experience that caused her, more than anything else, to hate him.

She very quickly discovered that he had married her for certain things--to have children, to have a companion. He had soon found that the latter of these he was not to obtain. She had in her none of the qualities that he needed in a companion, and so he had, with complete good-nature and kindliness, ceased to consider her. He should have married a bold ambitious woman who would have wanted the things, that he wanted--a woman something like Falk, his son. On the rare occasions when he analysed the situation he realised this. He did not in any way vent his disappointment upon, her--he was only slightly disappointed. He treated her with real kindness save on the occasions of his violent loss of temper, and gave her anything that she wanted. He had, on the whole, a great contempt for women save when, as for instance with Mrs. Combermere, they were really men.

It was to her most humiliating of all, that nothing in their relations worried him. He was perfectly at ease about it all, and fancied that she was the same. Meanwhile her real life was not dead, only dormant. For some years she tried to change the situation; she made little appeals to him, endeavoured timidly to force him to need her, even on one occasion threatened to sleep in a separate room. The memory of that little episode still terrified her. His incredulity had only been equalled by his anger. It was just as though some one had threatened to deprive him of his morning tub....

Then, when she saw that this was of no avail, she had concentrated herself upon her children, and especially upon Falk. For a while she had fancied that she was satisfied. Suddenly--and the discovery was awful--she was aware that Falk's affection all turned towards his father rather than towards her. Her son despised her and disregarded her as his father had done. She did not love Falk the less, but she ceased to expect anything from him--and this new loss she put down to her husband's account.

It was shortly after she made this discovery that the affair of the primroses occurred.

Many a woman now would have shown her hostility, but Mrs. Brandon was, by nature, a woman who showed nothing. She did not even show anything to herself, but all the deeper, because it found no expression, did her hatred penetrate. She scored now little marks against him for everything that he did. She did not say to herself that a day of vengeance was coming, she did not think of anything so melodramatic, she expected nothing of her future at all--but the marks were there.

The situation was developed by Falk's return from Oxford. When he was away her love for him seemed to her simply all in the world that she possessed. He wrote to her very seldom, but she made her Sunday letters to him the centre of her week, and wrote as though they were a passionately devoted mother and son. She allowed herself this little gentle deception--it was her only one.

But when he returned and was in the house it was more difficult to cheat herself. She saw at once that he had something on his mind, that he was engaged in some pursuit that he kept from every one. She discovered, too, that she was the one of whom he was afraid, and rightly so, the Archdeacon being incapable of discovering any one's pursuits so long as he was engaged on one of his own. Falk's fear of her perception brought about a new situation between them. He was not now oblivious of her presence as he had been. He tried to discover whether she knew anything. She found him often watching her, half in fear and half in defiance.

The thought that he might be engaged now upon some plan of his own in which she might share excited her and gave her something new to live for. She did not care what his plan might be; however dangerous, however wicked, she would assist him. Her moral sense had never been very deeply developed in her. Her whole character was based on her relations with individuals; for any one she loved she would commit murder, theft or blasphemy. She had never had any one to love except Falk.

She despised the Archdeacon the more because he now perceived nothing. Under his very nose the thing was, and he was sublimely contented. How she hated that content, and how she despised it!

About a week after the affair of the elephants, Mrs. Combermere asked her to tea. She disliked Mrs. Combermere, but she went to tea there because it was easier than not going. She disliked Mrs. Combermere especially because it was in her house that she heard silly, feminine praise of her husband. It amused her, however, to think of the amazed sensation there would be, did she one day burst out before them all and tell them what she really thought of the Archdeacon.

Of course she would never do that, but she had often outlined the speech in her mind.

Mrs. Combermere also lived in the Precincts, so that Mrs. Brandon had not far to go. Before she arrived there a little conversation took place between the lady of the house, Miss Stiles, Miss Dobell and Dr. Puddifoot, that her presence would most certainly have hindered. Mrs. Combermere was once described by some one as "constructed in concrete"; and that was not a bad description of her, so solid, so square and so unshakable and unbeatable was she. She wore stiff white collars like a man's, broad thick boots, short skirts and a belt at her waist. Her black hair was brushed straight back from her forehead, she had rather small brown eyes, a large nose and a large mouth. Her voice was a deep bass. She had some hair on her upper lip, and thick, strong, very white hands. She liked to walk down the High Street, a silver-topped cane in her hand, a company of barking dogs at her heels, and a hat, with large hat-pins, set a little on one side of her head. She had a hearty laugh, rather like the Archdeacon's. Dr. Puddifoot was our doctor for many years and brought many of my generation into the world. He was a tall, broad, loose-set man, who always wore tweeds of a bright colour.

Mrs. Combermere cared nothing for her surroundings, and her house was never very tidy. She bullied her servants, but they liked her because she gave good wages and fulfilled her promises. She was the first woman in Polchester to smoke cigarettes. It was even said that she smoked cigars, but no one, I think, ever saw her do this.

On this afternoon she subjected Miss Stiles to a magisterial inquiry; Miss Stiles had on the preceding evening given a little supper party, and no one in Polchester did anything of the kind without having to render account to Mrs. Combermere afterwards. They all sat round the fire, because it was a cold day. Mrs. Combermere sat on a straight-backed chair, tilting it forward, her skirt drawn up to her knees, lier thick-stockinged legs and big boots for all the world to see.

"Well, Ellen, whom did you have?"

"Ronder and his aunt, the Bentinck-Majors, Charlotte Ryle and Major Drake."

"Sorry I couldn't have been there. What did you give them?"

"Soup, fish salad, cutlets, chocolate soufflé, sardines on toast."

"What drink?"

"Sherry, claret, lemonade for Charlotte, whisky."

"Any catastrophes?"

"No, I don't think so. Bentinck-Major sang afterwards."

"Hum--not sorry I missed that. When was it over?"

"About eleven."

"What did you ask them for?"

"For the Ronders."

Mrs. Combermere, raising one foot, kicked a coal into blaze.

"Tea will be in in a minute.... Now, I'll tell you for your good, my dear Ellen, that I don't like your Ronder."

Miss Stiles laughed. "Oh, you needn't mind me, Betsy. You never have. Why don't you?"

"In the first place, he's stupid."

Miss Stiles laughed again.

"Never wronger in your life. I thought you were smarter than that."

Mrs. Combermere smacked her knee. "I may be wrong. I often am. I take prejudices, I know. Secondly, he's fat and soft--too like the typical parson."

"It's an assumed disguise--however, go on."

"Third, I hear he agrees with everything one says."

"You hear? You've not talked to him yourself, then?"

Mrs. Combermere raised her head as the door opened and the tea came in.

"No. I've only seen him in Cathedral. But I've called, and he's coming to- day."

Miss Stiles smiled in her own dark and mysterious way.

"Well, Betsy, my dear, I leave you to find it all out for yourself.... I keep my secrets."

"If you do," said Mrs. Combermere, getting up and going to the tea-table, "it's the first time you ever have. And Ellen," she went on, "I've a bone to pick. I won't have you laughing at my dear Archdeacon."

"Laughing at your Archdeacon?" Miss Stiles' voice was softer and slower than any complaining cow's.

"Yes. I hear you've all been laughing about the elephant. That was a thing that might have happened to any one."

Puddifoot laughed. "The point is, though, that it happened to Brandon. That's the joke. And his new top hat."

"Well, I won't have it. Milk, doctor? Miss Dobell and I agree that it's a shame."

Miss Dobell, who was in appearance like one of those neat silk umbrellas with the head of a parrot for a handle, and whose voice was like the running brook both for melody and monotony, thus suddenly appealed to, blushed, stammered, and finally admitted that the Archdeacon was, in her opinion, a hero.

"That's not exactly the point, dear Mary," said Miss Stiles. "The point is, surely, that an elephant straight from the desert ate our best Archdeacon's best hat in the High Street. You must admit that that's a laughable circumstance in this the sixtieth year of our good Queen's reign. I, for one, intend to laugh."

"No, you don't, Ellen," and, to every one's surprise, Mrs. Combermere's voice was serious. "I mean what I say. I'm not joking at all. Brandon may have his faults, but this town and everything decent in it hangs by him. Take him away and the place drops to pieces. I suppose you think you're going to introduce your Ronders as up-to-date rivals. We prefer things as they are, thank you."

Miss Stiles' already bright colouring was a little brighter. She knew her Betsy Combermere, but she resented rebukes before Puddifoot.

"Then," she said, "if he means all that to the place, he'd better look after his son more efficiently."

"And exactly what do you mean by that?" asked Mrs. Combermere.

"Oh, everybody knows," said Miss Stiles, looking round to Miss Dobell and the doctor for support, "that young Brandon is spending the whole of his time down in Seatown, and that Miss Annie Hogg is not entirely unconnected with his visits."

"Really, Ellen," said Mrs. Combermere, bringing her fist down upon the table, "you're a disgusting woman. Yes, you are, and I won't take it back, however much you ask me to. All the worst scandal in this place comes from you. If it weren't for you we shouldn't be so exactly like every novelist's Cathedral town. But I warn you, I won't have you talking about Brandon. His son's only a boy, and the handsomest male in the place by the way--present company, of course, excepted. He's only been home a few months, and you're after him already with your stories. I won't have it----"

Miss Stiles rose, her fingers trembling as she drew on her gloves.

"Well, I won't stay here to be insulted, anyway. You may have known me a number of years, Betsy, but that doesn't allow you all the privileges. The only matter with me is that I say what I think. You started the business, I believe, by insulting my friends."

"Sit down, Ellen," said Mrs. Combermere, laughing. "Don't be a fool. Who's insulting your friends? You'd insult them yourself if they were only successful enough. You can have your Ronder."

The door opened and the maid announced: "Canon Ronder."

Every one was conscious of the dramatic fitness of this, and no one more so than Mrs. Combermere. Ronder entered the room, however, quite unaware of anything apparently, except that he was feeling very well and expected amusement from his company. He presented precisely the picture of a nice contented clergyman who might be baffled by a school treat but was thoroughly "up" to afternoon tea. He seemed a little stouter than when he had first come to Polchester, and his large spectacles were as round as two young moons.

"How do you do, Mrs. Combernere? I do hope you will forgive my aunt, but she has a bad headache. She finds Polchester a little relaxing."

Mrs. Combermere did not get up, but stared at him from, behind her tea- table. That was a stare that has frightened many people in its time, and to-day it was especially challenging. She was annoyed with Ellen Stiles, and here, in front of her, was the cause of her annoyance.

They faced one another, and the room behind them was aware that Mrs. Combermere, at any rate, had declared battle. Of what Ronder was aware no one knew.

"How do you do, Canon Ronder? I'm delighted that you've honoured my poor little house. I hear that you're a busy man. I'm all the more proud that you can spare me half an hour."

She kept him standing there, hoping, perhaps, that he would be consciously awkward and embarrassed. He was completely at his ease.

"Oh, no, I'm not busy. I'm a very lazy man." He looked down at her, smiling, aware, apparently, of no one else in the room. "I'm always meaning to pull myself up. But I'm too old for improvement"

"We're all busy people here, although you mayn't think it, Canon Ronder. But I'm afraid you're giving a false account of yourself. I've heard of you."

"Nothing but good, I hope."

"Well, I don't know. That depends. I expect you're going to shake us all up and teach us improvement."

"Dear me, no! I come to you for instruction. I haven't an idea in the world." "Too much modesty is a dangerous thing. Nobody's modest in Polchester."

"Then I shall be Polchester's first modest man. But I'm not modest. I simply speak the truth."

Mrs. Combermere smiled grimly. "There, too, you will be the exception. We none of us speak the truth here."

"Really, Mrs. Combermere, you're giving Polchester a dreadful character." He laughed, but did not take his eyes away from her. "I hope that you've been here so long that you've forgotten what the place is like. I believe in first impressions."

"So do I," she said, very grimly indeed.

"Well, in a year's time we shall see which of us is right. I'll be quite willing to admit defeat."

"Oh, a year's time!" She laughed more pleasantly. "A great deal can happen in a year. You may be a bishop by then, Canon Ronder,"

"Ah, that would be more than I deserve," he answered quite gravely.

The little duel was over. She turned around, introduced him to Miss Dobell and Puddifoot, both of whom, however, he had already met. He sat down, very happily, near the fire and listened to Miss Dobell's shrill proclamation of her adoration of Browning. Conversation became general, and was concerned first with the Jubilee and the preparations for it, afterwards with the state of South Africa, Lord Penrhyn's quarries, and bicycling. Every one had a good deal to say about this last topic, and the strange costumes which ladies, so the papers said, were wearing in Battersea Park when out on their morning ride.

Miss Dobell said that "it was too disgraceful," to which Mrs. Combermere replied "Fudge! As though every one didn't know by this time that women had legs!"

Everything, in fact, went very well, although Ellen Stiles observed to herself with a certain malicious pleasure that their hostess was not entirely at her ease, was "a little ruffled, about something."

Soon two more visitors arrived--first Mr. Morris, then Mrs. Brandon. They came close upon one another's heels, and it was at once evident that they would, neither of them, alter very considerably the room's atmosphere. No one ever paid any attention to Mrs. Brandon in Polchester, and although Mr. Morris had been some time now in the town, he was so shy and retiring and quiet that no one was, as yet, very distinctly aware of him. Mrs. Combermere was occupied with her own thoughts and the others were talking very happily beside the fire, so it soon happened that Morris and Mrs. Brandon were sitting by themselves in the window.

There occurred then a revelation.... That is perhaps a portentous word, but what else can one call it? It is a platitude, of course, to say that there is probably no one alive who does not remember some occasion of a sudden communion with another human being that was so beautiful, so touching, so transcendentally above human affairs that a revelation was the only definition for it. Afterwards, when analysis plays its part, one may talk about physical attractions, about common intellectual interests, about spiritual bonds, about what you please, but one knows that the essence of that meeting is undefined.

It may be quite enough to say about Morris and Mrs. Brandon, that they were both very lonely people. You may say, too, that there was in both of them an utterly unsatisfied longing to have some one to protect and care for. Not her husband nor Falk nor Joan needed Mrs. Brandon in the least-- and the Archdeacon did not approve of dogs in the house. Or you may say, if you like, that these two liked the look of one another, and leave it at that. Still the revelation remains--and all the tragedy and unhappiness and bitterness that that revelation involved remains too....

This was, of course, not the first time that they had met. Once before at Mrs. Combermere's they had been introduced and talked together for a moment; but on that occasion there had been no revelation.

They did not say very much now. Mrs. Brandon asked Morris whether he liked Polchester and he said yes. They talked about the Cathedral and the coming Jubilee. Morris said that he had met Falk. Mrs. Brandon, colouring a little, asked was he not handsome? She said that he was a remarkable boy, very independent, that was why he had not got on very well at Oxford.... He was a tremendous comfort to her, she said. When he went away...but she stopped suddenly.

Not looking at him, she said that sometimes one felt lonely even though there was a great deal to do, as there always was in a town like Polchester.

Yes, Morris said that he knew that. And that was really all. There were long pauses in their conversation, pauses that were like the little wooden hammerings on the stage before the curtain rises.

Mrs. Brandon said that she hoped that he would come and see her, and he said that he would. Their hands touched, and they both felt as though the room had suddenly closed in upon them and become very dim, blotting the other people out.

Then Mrs. Brandon got up to go. Afterwards, when she looked back to this, she remembered that she had looked, for some unknown reason, especially at Canon Ronder, as she stood there saying good-bye.

She decided that she did not like him. Then she went away, and Mrs. Combermere was glad that she had gone.

Of all the dull women....

Chapter VI

Seatown Mist and Cathedral Dust

Falk Brandon knew quite well that his mother was watching him.

It was a strange truth that until this return of his from Oxford he had never considered his mother at all. It was not that he had grown to disregard her, as do many sons, because of the monotonous regularity of her presence. Nor was it that he despised her because he seemed so vastly to have outgrown her. He had not been unkind nor patronising nor contemptuous--he had simply not yet thought about her. The circumstances of his recent return, however, had forced him to consider every one in the house. He had his secret preoccupation that seemed so absorbing and devastating to him that he could not believe that every one around him would not guess it. He soon discovered that his father was too cock-sure and his sister too innocent to guess anything. Now he was not himself a perceptive man; he had, after all, seen as yet very little of the world, and he had a great deal of his father's self-confidence; nevertheless, he was just perceptive enough to perceive that his mother was thinking about him, was watching him, was waiting to see what he would do....

His secret was quite simply that, for the last year, he had been devastated by the consciousness of Annie Hogg, the daughter of the landlord of "The Dog and Pilchard." Yes. devastated was the word. It would not be true to say that he was in love with her or, indeed, had any analysed emotion for her--he was aware of her always, was disturbed by her always, could not keep away from her, wanted something in connection with her far deeper than mere love-making--

What he wanted he did not know. He could not keep away from her, and yet when he was with her nothing occurred. She did not apparently care for him; he was not even sure that he wanted her to. At Oxford during his last term he had thought of her--incessantly, a hot pain at his heart. He had not invited the disturbance that had sent him down, but he had welcomed it.

Every day he went to "The Dog and Pilchard." He drank but little and talked to no one. He just leaned up against the wall and looked at her. Sometimes he had a word with her. He knew that they must all be speaking of it. Maybe the whole town was chattering. He could not think of that. He had no plans, no determination, no resolve--and he was desperately unhappy....

Into this strange dark confusion the thought of his mother drove itself. He had from the very beginning been aware of his father in this connection. In his own selfish way he loved his father, and he shared in his pride and self-content. He was proud of his father for being what he was, for his good-natured contempt of other people, for his handsome body and his dominance of the town. He could understand that his father should feel as he did, and he did honestly consider him a magnificent man and far above every one else in the place. But that did not mean that he ever listened to anything that his father said. He pleased himself in what he did, and laughed at his father's temper.

He had perceived from the first that this connection of his with Annie Hogg might do his father very much harm, and he did not want to harm him. The thought of this did not mean that for a moment he contemplated dropping the affair because of his father--no, indeed--but the thought of the old man, as he termed him, added dimly to his general unhappiness. He appreciated the way that his father had taken his return from Oxford. The old man was a sportsman. It was a great pity that he should have to make him unhappy over this business. But there it was--you couldn't alter things.

It was this fatalistic philosophy that finally ruled everything with him. "What must be must." If things went wrong he had his courage, and he was helped too by his contempt for the world....

He knew his father, but he was aware now that he knew nothing at all about his mother.

"What's she thinking about?" he asked himself.

One afternoon he was about to go to Seatown when, in the passage outside his bedroom, he met his mother. They both stopped as though they had something to say to one another. He did not look at all like her son, so fair, tall and aloof, as though even in his own house he must be on his guard, prepared to challenge any one who threatened his private plans.

"She's like a little mouse," he thought to himself, as though he were seeing her for the first time, "preparing to run off into the wainscot" He was conscious, too, of her quiet clothes and shy preoccupied timidity--all of it he seemed to see for the first time, a disguise for some purpose as secret, perhaps, as his own.

"Oh, Falk," she said, and stopped, and then went on with the question that she so often asked him:

"Is there anything you want?"

"No, mother, thank you. I'm just going out."

"Oh, yes...." She still stayed there nervously looking up at him.

"I was wondering----Are you going into the town?"

"Yes, mother. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"No, thank you." Still she did not move.

"Joan's out," she said. Then she went on quickly, "I wish you'd tell me if there were anything----"

"Why, of course." He laughed. "What exactly do you mean?"

"Nothing, dear. Only I like to know about your plans."

"Plans? I haven't any."

"No, but I always think you may be going away suddenly. Perhaps I could help you. I know it isn't very much that I can do, but anything you told me I think I could help you about.... I'd like to help you."

He could see that she had been resolving for some time to speak to him, and that this little appeal was the result of a desperate determination. He was touched.

"That's all right, mother. I suppose father and you think I oughtn't to be hanging around here doing nothing." "Oh, your father hasn't said anything to me. I don't know what he thinks. But I should miss you if you went. It is nice for us having you, although, of course, it must seem slow to you here."

He stood back against the wall, looking past her out through the window that showed the grey sky of a misty day.

"Well, it's true that I've got to settle about doing something soon. I can't be home like this for ever. There's a man I know in London wants me to go in for a thing with him...."

"What kind of a thing, dear?"

"It's to do with the export trade. Travelling about. I should like that. I'm a bit restless, I'm afraid. I should want to put some money into it, of course, but the governor will let me have something.... He wants me to go into Parliament."

"Parliament?"

"Yes," Falk laughed. "That's his latest idea. He was talking about it the other night. Of course, that's foolishness. It's not my line at all. I told him so."

"I wouldn't like you to go away altogether," she repeated. "It would make a great difference to me."

"Would it really?" He had a strange mysterious impulse to speak to her about Annie Hogg. The thought of his mother and Annie Hogg together showed him at once how impossible that was. They were in separate worlds. He was suddenly angry at the difficulties that life was making for him without his own wish. "Oh, I'll be here some time yet, mother," he said. "Well, I must get along now. I've got an appointment with a fellow."

She smiled and disappeared into her room.

All the way into Seatown he was baffled and irritated by this little conversation. It seemed that you could not disregard people by simply determining to disregard them. All the time behind you and them some force was insisting on places being taken, connections being formed. One was simply a bally pawn...a bally pawn....

But what was his mother thinking? Had some one been talking to her? Perhaps already she knew about Annie. But what could she know? Girls like Annie were outside her ken. What could his mother know about life? The day did not help his dissatisfaction. The fog had not descended upon the town, but it had sent as its forerunner a wet sea mist, dim and intangible, depressing because it removed all beauty and did not leave even challenging ugliness in its place.

On the best of days Seatown was not beautiful. I have read in books romantic descriptions of Glebeshire coves, Glebeshire towns with the romantic Inn, the sanded floor, fishermen with gold rings in their ears and strange oaths upon their lips. In one book I remember there was a fine picture of such a place, with beautiful girls dancing and mysterious old men telling mysterious tales about ghosts and goblins, and, of course, somewhere in the distance some one was singing a chanty, and the moon was rising, and there was a nice little piece of Glebeshire dialect thrown in. All very pretty.... Seatown cannot claim such prettiness. Perhaps once long ago, when there were only the Cathedral, the Castle, the Rock, and a few cottages down by the river, when, at night-tide, strange foreign ships came up from the sea, when the woods were wild forest and the downs were bare and savage, Seatown had its romance, but that was long ago. Seatown, in these latter days, was a place of bad drainage, bad drinking, bad living and bad dying. The men who haunted its dirty, narrow little streets were loafers and idlers and castaways. The women were, most of them, no better than they should be, and the children were the most slatternly and ill-bred in the whole of Glebeshire. Small credit to the Canons and the Town Councillors and the prosperous farmers that it was so, but in their defence it might be urged that it needed a very valiant Canon and the most fearless of Town Councillors to disturb that little nest. And the time came when it was disturbed....

Even the Pol, a handsome river enough out beyond the town in the reaches of the woods, was no pretty sight at low tide when there was nothing to see but a thin, sluggish grey stream filtering through banks of mud to its destination, the sea. At high tide the river beat up against the crazy stone wall that bordered Pennicent Street; and on the further side there were green fields and a rising hill with a feathery wood to crown it. From the river, coming up through the green banks, Seatown looked picturesque, with its disordered cottages scrambling in confusion at the tail of the rock and the Cathedral and Castle nobly dominating it. That distant view is the best thing to be said for Seatown.

To-day, in the drizzling mist, the place was horribly depressing. Falk plunged down into Bridge Street as into a damp stuffy well. Here some of the houses had once been fine; there were porticoes and deep-set doors and bow-windows, making them poor relations of the handsome benevolent Georgian houses in Orange Street. The street, top-tilting down to the river, was slovenly with dirt and carelessness. Many of the windows were broken, their panes stuffed with paper; washing hung from house to house. The windows that were not broken were hermetically sealed and filled with grimy plants and ferns, and here and there a photograph of an embarrassed sailor or a smiling married couple or an overdressed young woman placed face outward to the street. Bridge Street tumbled with a dirty absent- mindedness into Pennicent Street. This, the main thoroughfare of Seatown, must have been once a handsome cobbled walk by the river-side. The houses, more than in Bridge Street, showed by their pillared doorways and their faded red brick that they had once been gentlemen's residences, with gardens, perhaps, running to the river's edge and a fine view of the meadows and woods beyond. To-day all was shrouded in a mist that was never stationary, that seemed alive in its shifting movement, revealing here a window, there a door, now a chimney-pot, now steps that seemed to lead into air, and the river, now at full tide and lapping the stone wall, seemed its drunken bewildered voice.

"Bally pawns, that's what we are," Falk muttered again. It seemed to be the logical conclusion of the thoughts that had worried him, like flies, during his walk. Some one lurched against him as he stayed for a moment to search for the inn. A hot spasm of anger rose in him, so sudden and fierce that he was frightened by it, as though he had seen his own face in a mirror. But he said nothing. "Sorry," said a voice, and shadow faded into shadow.

He found the "Dog and Pilchard" easily enough. Just beyond it the river was caught into a kind of waterfall by a ridge of stone that projected almost into mid-stream. At high tide it tumbled over this obstruction with an astonished splash and gurgle. Even when the river was at its lowest there was a dim chattering struggle at this point. Falk always connected this noise with the inn and the power or enchantment of the inn that held him--"Black Enchantment," perhaps. He was to hear that struggling chatter of the river until his dying day.

He pushed through the passage and turned to the right into the bar. A damp day like this always served Hogg's trade. The gas was lit and sizzled overhead with a noise as though it commented ironically on the fatuity of the human beings beneath it. The room was full, but most of the men-- seamen, loafers, a country man or two--crowded up to the bar. Falk crossed to a table in the corner near the window, his accustomed seat. No one seemed to notice him, but soon Hogg, stout and smiling, came over to him. No one had ever seen Samuel Hogg out of temper--no, never, not even when there had been fighting in the place and he had been compelled to eject men, by force of arms, through the doors and windows. There had not been many fights there. Men were afraid of him, in spite of his imperturbable good temper. Men said of him that he would stick at nothing, although what exactly was meant by that no one knew.

He had a good word for every one; no crime or human failing could shock him. He laughed at everything. And yet men feared him. Perhaps for that very reason. The worst sinner has some kind of standard of right and wrong. Himself he may not keep it, but he likes to see it there. "Oh, he's deep," was Seatown's verdict on Samuel Hogg, and it is certain that the late Mrs. Hogg had not been, in spite of her husband's good temper, a happy woman.

He came up to Falk now,--smiling, and asked him what he would have. "Nasty day," he said. Falk ordered his drink. Dimly through the mist and thickened air the Cathedral chimes recorded the hour. Funny how you could hear them in every nook and corner of Polchester.

"Likely turn to rain before night," Hogg said, as he turned back to the bar. Falk sat there watching. Some of the men he knew, some he did not, but to-day they were all shadows to him. Strange how, from the moment that he crossed the threshold of that place, hot, burning excitement and expectation lapped him about, swimming up to him, engulfing him, swamping him body and soul. He sat there drowned in it, not stirring, his eyes fixed upon the door. There was a good deal of noise, laughter, swearing, voices raised and dropped, forming a kind of skyline, and above this a voice telling an interminable tale.

Annie Hogg came in, and at once Falk's throat contracted and his heart hammered in the palms of his hands. She moved about, talking to the men, fetching drinks, unconcerned and aloof as she always was. Seen there in the mist of the overcrowded and evil-smelling room, there was nothing very remarkable about her. Stalwart and resolute and self-possessed she looked; sometimes she was beautiful, but not now. She was a woman at whom most men would have looked twice. Her expression was not sullen nor disdainful; in that, perhaps, there was something fine, because there was life, of its own kind, in her eyes, and independence in the carriage of her head.

Falk never took his eyes from her. At that moment she came down the room and saw him. She did not come over to him at once, but stopped and talked to some one at another table. At last she was beside him, standing up against his table and looking over his head at the window behind him.

"Nasty weather, Mr. Brandon," she said. Her voice was low and not unpleasant; although she rolled her r's her Glebeshire accent was not very strong, and she spoke slowly, as though she were trying to choose her words.

"Yes," Falk answered. "Good for your trade, though."

"Dirty weather always brings them in," she said.

He did not look at her.

"Been busy to-day?"

"Nothing much this morning," she answered. "I've been away at my aunt's, out to Borheddon, these last two days."

"Yes. I saw you were not here," he said. "Did you have a good time?"

"Middling," she answered. "My aunt's been terrible bad with bronchitis this winter. Poor soul, it'll carry her off one of these days, I reckon."

"What's Borheddon like?" he asked.

"Nothing much. Nothing to do, you know. But I like a bit of quiet just for a day or two. How've you been keeping, Mr. Brandon?"

"Oh, I'm all right. I shall be off to London to look for a job one of these days."

He looked up at her suddenly, sharply, as though he wanted to catch her interest. But she showed no emotion.

"Well, I expect this is slow for you, a little place like this. Plenty going on in London, I expect."

"Yes. Do you ever think you'd like to go there?"

"Daresay I shall one of these days. Never know your luck. But I'm not terrible anxious.... Well, I must be getting on."

He caught her eyes and held them.

"Come back for a moment when you're less busy. I've got something I want to say to you."

Very slightly the colour rose in her dark cheek.

"All right," she said.

When she had gone he drew a deep breath, as though he had surmounted some great and sudden danger. He felt that if she had refused to come he would have risen and broken everything in the place. Now, as though he had, by that little conversation with her, reassured himself about her, he looked around the room. His attention was at once attracted by a man who was sitting in the further corner, his back against the wall, opposite to him.

This was a man remarkable for his extreme thinness, for the wild lock of black hair that fell over his forehead and almost into his eyes, and for a certain sort of threadbare and dissolute distinction which hung about him. Falk knew him slightly. His name was Edmund Davray, and he had lived in Polchester now for a considerable number of years. He was an artist, and had arrived in the town one summer on a walking tour through Glebeshire. He had attracted attention at once by the quality of his painting, by the volubility of his manner, and by his general air of being a person of considerable distinction. His surname was French, but no one knew anything with any certainty about him. Something attracted him in Polchester, and he stayed. He soon gave it out that it was the Cathedral that fascinated him; he painted a number of remarkable sketches of the nave, the choir, Saint Margaret's Chapel, the Black Bishop's Tomb. He had a "show" in London and was supposed to have done very well out of it. He disappeared for a little, but soon returned, and was to be found in the Cathedral most days of the week.

At first he had a little studio at the top of Orange Street. At this time he was rather popular in Polchester society. Mrs. Combermere took him up and found him audacious and amusing. His French name gave a kind of piquancy to his audacity; he was unusual; he was striking. It was right for Polchester to have an artist and to stick him up in the very middle of the town as an emblem of taste and culture. Soon, however, he began to decline. It was whispered that he drank, that his morals were "only what you'd expect of an artist," and that he was really "too queer about the Cathedral." One day he told Miss Dobell that the amount that she knew about literature would go inside a very small pea, and he was certainly "the worse for liquor" at one of Mrs. Combermere's tea-parties. He did not, however, give them time to drop him; he dropped himself, gave up his Orange Street studio, lived, no one knew where, neglected his appearance, and drank quite freely whenever he could get anything to drink. He now cut everybody, rather than allowed himself to be cut.

He was in the Cathedral as often as ever, and Lawrence and Cobbett, the Vergers, longed to have an excuse for expelling him, but he always behaved himself there and was in nobody's way. He was finally regarded as "quite mad," and was seen to talk aloud to himself as he walked about the streets.

"An unhappy example," Miss Dobell said, "of the artistic temperament, that wonderful gift, gone wrong."

Falk had seen him often before at the "Dog and Pilchard," and had wondered at first whether Annie Hogg was the attraction. It was soon clear, however, that there was nothing in that. He never looked at the girl nor, indeed, at any one else in the place. He simply sat there moodily staring in front of him and drinking.

To-day it was clear that Falk had caught his attention. He looked across the room at him with a queer defiant glance, something like Falk's own. Once it seemed that he had made up his mind to come over and speak to him.

He half rose in his seat, then sank back again. But his eyes came round again and again to the corner where Falk was sitting.

The Cathedral chimes had whispered twice in the room before Annie returned.

"What is it you're wanting?" she asked.

"Come outside and speak to me."

"No, I can't do that. Father's watching."

"Well, will you meet me one evening and have a talk?"

"What about?"

"Several things."

"It isn't right, Mr. Brandon. What's a gentleman like you want with a girl like me?"

"I only want us to get away a little from all this noise and filth."

Suddenly she smiled.

"Well, I don't mind if I do. After supper's a good time. Father goes up the town to play billiards. After eight."

"When?"

"What about to-morrow evening?"

"All right. Where?"

"Up to the Mill. Five minutes up from here."

"I'll be there," he said.

"Don't let father catch 'ee--that's all," she smiled down at him. "You'm a fule, Mr. Brandon, to bother with such as I." He said nothing and she walked away. Very shortly after, Davray got up from his seat and came over to Falk's corner. It was obvious that he had been drinking rather heavily. He was a little unsteady on his feet.

"You're young Brandon, aren't you?" he asked.

In ordinary times Falk would have told him to go to the devil, and there would have been a row, but to-day he was caught away so absolutely into his own world that any one could speak to him, any one laugh at him, any one insult him, and he would not care. He had been meditating for weeks the advance that he had just taken; always when one meditates for long over a risk it swells into gigantic proportions. So this had been; that simple sentence asking her to come out and talk to him had seemed an impossible challenge to every kind of fate, and now, in a moment, the gulf had been jumped...so easy, so strangely easy....

From a great distance Davray's words came to him, and in the dialogue that followed he spoke like a somnambulist.

"Yes," he said, "my name's Brandon."

"I knew, of course," said Davray. "I've seen you about." He spoke with great swiftness, the words tumbling over one another, not with eagerness, but rather with a kind of supercilious carelessness. "Beastly hole, isn't this? Wonder why one comes here. Must do something in this rotten town. I've drunk enough of this filthy beer. What do you say to moving out?"

Falk looked up at him.

"What do you say?" he asked.

"Let's move out of this. If you're walking up the town I'll go with you."

Falk was not conscious of the man, but it was quite true that he wanted to get out of the place now that his job in it was done. He got up without a word and began to push through the room. He was met near the door by Hogg.

"Goin', Mr. Brandon? Like to settle now or leave it to another day?"

"What's that?" said Falk, stopping as though some one had touched him on the shoulder. He seemed to see the large smiling man suddenly in front of him outlined against a shifting wall of mist.

"Payin' now or leavin' it? Please yourself, Mr. Brandon."

"Oh--paying!" He fumbled in his pocket, produced half-a-crown, gave it to Hogg without looking at him and went out. Davray followed, slouching through the room and passage with the conceited over-careful walk of a man a little tipsy.

Outside, as they went down the street still obscured with the wet mist, Davray poured out a flow of words to which he seemed to want no answer.

"I hope you didn't mind my speaking to you like that--a bit unceremonious. But to tell you the truth I'm lonely sometimes. Also, if you want to know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I'm a bit tipsy too. Generally am. This air makes one feel queer after that stinking hole, doesn't it? If you can call this air. I've seen you there a lot lately and often thought I'd like to talk to you. You're the only decent- looking fellow in the whole of this town, if you'll forgive my saying so. Isn't it a bloody hole? But of course you think so too. I can see it in your face. I suppose you go to that pub after that girl. I saw you talking to her. Well, each man to his taste. I'd never interfere with any man's pleasure. I loathe women myself, always have. They never appealed to me a little bit. In Paris the men used to wonder what I was after. I was after Ambition in those days. Funny thing, but I thought I was going to be a great painter once. Queer what one can trick oneself into believing--so I might have been if I hadn't come to this beastly town. Hope I'm not boring you...."

He stopped as though he had suddenly realised that his companion had not said a word. They were pushing now up the hill into the market-place and the mist was now so thick that they could scarcely see one another's face. Falk was thinking. "To-morrow evening.... What do I want? What's going to happen? What do I want?"

The silence made him conscious of his companion.

"What do you say?" he asked.

"Hope I'm not boring you."

"No, that's all right. Where are we?"

"Just coming into the market."

"Oh, yes."

"If I talk a lot it's because I haven't had any one to talk to for weeks. Not that I want to talk to any one. I despise the lot of them. Conceited set of ignorant parrots.... Whole place run by women and what can you expect? You're not staying here, I suppose. I heard you'd had enough of Oxford and I don't wonder. No place for a man, beautiful enough but spoilt by the people. Damn people--always coming along and spoiling places. Now there's the Cathedral, most wonderful thing in England, but does any one know it? Not a bit of it. You'd think they fancied that the Cathedral owes them something--about as much sense of beauty as a cockroach."

They were pressing up the High Street now. There was no one about. It was a town of ghosts. By the Arden Gate Falk realised where he was and halted.

"Hullo! we're nearly home.... Well...good afternoon, Mr. Davray."

"Come into the Cathedral for a moment," Davray seemed to be urgent about this. "Have you ever been up into the King Harry Tower? I bet you haven't."

"King Harry Tower?..." Falk stared at the man. What did the fellow want him to do? Go into the Cathedral? Well, why not? Stupid to go home just now--nothing to do there but think, and people would interrupt.... Think better out of doors. But what was there to think about? He was not thinking, simply going round and round.... Who was this fellow anyway?

"As you like," he said.

They crossed the Precincts and went through the West door into the Cathedral. The nave was full of dusky light and very still. Candles glimmered behind the great choir-screen and there were lamps by the West door. Seen thus, in its half-dark, the nave bore full witness to the fact that Polchester has the largest Cathedral in Northern Europe. It is certainly true that no other building in England gives the same overwhelming sense of length.

In full daylight the nave perhaps, as is the case with all English Cathedrals, lacks colour and seems cold and deserted. In the dark of this spring evening it was full of mystery, and the great columns of the nave's ten bays, rising unbroken to the roof groining, sprang, it seemed, out of air, superbly, intolerably inhuman.

The colours from the tombs and the brasses glimmered against the grey, and the great rose-coloured circle of the West window flung pale lights across the cold dark of the flags and pillars.

The two men were held by the mysterious majesty of the place. Falk was lifted right out of his own preoccupied thoughts.

He had never considered the Cathedral except as a place to which he was dragged for services against his will, but to-night, perhaps because of his own crisis, he seemed to see it all for the first time. He was conscious now of Davray and was aware that he did not like him and wished to be rid of him--"an awful-looking tout" he thought him, "with his greasy long hair and his white long face and his spindle legs."

"Now we'll go up into King Harry," Davray said. But at that moment old Lawrence came bustling along. Lawrence, over seventy years of age, had grown stout and white-haired in the Cathedral's service. He was a fine figure in his purple gown, broad-shouldered, his chest and stomach of a grand protuberance, his broad white flowing beard a true emblem of his ancient dignity. He was the most autocratic of Vergers and had been allowed now for many years to do as he pleased. The only thorn in his flesh was Cobbett, the junior Verger, who, as he very well realised, was longing for him to die, that he might step into his shoes. "I do believe," he was accustomed to say to Mrs. Lawrence, a little be-bullied woman, "that that man will poison me one of these fine days."

His autocracy had grown on him with the size and the whiteness of his beard, and there were many complaints--rude to strangers, sycophantic to the aristocracy, greedy of tips, insolent and conceited, he was an excellent example of the proper spirit of the Church Militant. He had, however, his merits. He loved small children and would have allowed them to run riot on the Cathedral greens had he not been checked, and he had a pride in the Cathedral that would drive him to any sacrifice in his defence of it.

It was natural enough that he should hate the very sight of Davray, and when that gentleman appeared he hung about in the background hoping that he might catch him in some crime. At first he thought him alone.

"Oh, Verger," Davray said, as though he were speaking to a beggar who had asked of him alms. "I want to go up into King Harry. You have the key, I think."

"Well, you can't, sir," said Lawrence, with considerable satisfaction. "'Tis after hours." Then he saw Falk.

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Brandon, sir. I didn't realise. Do you want to go up the Tower, sir?" "We may as well," said Falk.

"Of course for you, sir, it's different. Strangers have to keep certain hours. This way, sir."

They followed the pompous old man across the nave, up the side aisle, past "tombs and monuments and gilded knights," until they came to the King Harry Chapel. This was to the right of the choir, and before the screen that railed it off from the rest of the church there was a notice saying that this Chapel had been put aside for private prayer and it was hoped that no one would talk or make any noise, were some one meditating or praying there. The little place was infinitely quiet, with a special air of peace and beauty as though all the prayers and meditations that had been offered there had deeply sanctified it; Lawrence pushed open the door of the screen and they crossed the flagged floor. Suddenly into the heart of the hush there broke the Cathedral chimes, almost, as it seemed, directly above their heads, booming, echoing, dying with lingering music back into the silence. At the corner of the Chapel there was a little wooden door; Lawrence unlocked it and pushed it open. "Mind how you go, sir," he said, speaking to Falk as though Davray did not exist. "'Tis a bit difficult with the winding stair."

The two men went forward into the black darkness, leaving the dusky light behind them. Davray led the way and Falk followed, feeling with his arms the black walls on either side of him, knocking with his legs against the steps above him. Here there was utter darkness and no sound. He had suddenly a half-alarmed, half-humorous suspicion that Davray was suddenly going to turn round upon him and push him down the stair or stick a knife into him--the fear of the dark. "After all, what am I doing with this fellow?" he thought. "I don't know him. I don't like him. I don't want to be with him."

"That's better," he heard Davray say. There was a glimmer, then a shadow of grey light, finally they had stepped out into what was known as the Whispering Gallery, a narrow railed platform that ran the length of the Chapel and beyond to the opposite Tower. They did not stop there. They pushed up again by more winding stairs, black for a space, then lit by a window, then black again. At last, after what had seemed a long journey, they were in a little, spare, empty room with a wooden floor. One side of this little room was open and railed in. Looking down, the floor of the nave seemed a vast distance below. You seemed here to be flying in glory. The dim haze of the candles just touched the misty depth with golden colour. Above them the great roof seemed close and menacing. Everywhere pillars and buttresses rose out of space. The great architect of the building seemed here to have his true kingdom, so vast was the depth and the height and the grandeur. The walls and the roof and the pillars that supported it were alive with their own greatness, scornful of little men and their little loves. The hush was filled with movement and stir and a vast business....

The two men leaned on the rails and looked down. Far below, the white figured altar, the brass of the Black Bishop's tomb, the glitter of Saint Margaret's screen struck in little points of dull gold like stars upon a grey inverted sky.

Davray turned suddenly upon his companion. "And it's men like your father," he said, "who think that this place is theirs.... Theirs! Presumption! But they'll get it in the neck for that. This place can bide its time. Just when you think you're its master it turns and stamps you out."

Falk said nothing. Davray seemed irritated by his silence. "You wait and see," he said. "It amuses me to see your governor walking up the choir on Sundays as though he owned the place. Owned it! Why, he doesn't realise a stone of it! Well, he'll get it. They all have who've tried his game. Owned it!"

"Look here," said Falk, "don't you say anything about my father--that's none of your business. He's all right. I don't know what the devil I came up here for--thinking of other things."

Davray too was thinking of other things.

"You wonderful place!" he whispered. "You beautiful place! You've ruined me, but I don't care. You can do what you like with me. You wonder! You wonder!"

Falk looked at him. The man was mad. He was holding on to the railing, leaning forward, staring....

"Look here, it isn't safe to lean like that. You'll be tumbling over and breaking your neck if you're not careful."

But Davray did not hear him. He was lost in his own dreams. Falk despised dreams although just now he was himself in the grip of one. Besides the fellow was drunk.

A sudden disgust of his companion overtook him.

"Well, so long," he said. "I must be getting home!"

He wondered for a moment whether it were safe to leave the fellow there. "It's his own look-out," he thought, and as Davray said no more he left him.

Back once more in the King Harry Chapel, he looked up. But he could see no one and could hear no sound.

Chapter VII

Ronder's Day

Ronder had now spent several months in Polchester and was able to come to an opinion about it, and the opinion that he had come to was that he could be very comfortable there. His aunt, who, in spite of her sharpness, never was sure how he would take anything, was a little surprised when he told her this. But then she was never certain what were the secret springs from which he derived that sense of comfort that was the centre of his life. She should have known by now that he derived it from two things--luxury and the possibility of intrigue.

Polchester could not have appeared to any casual observer a luxurious town, but it had for Ronder exactly that combination of beauty and mystery that obtained for him his sensation.

He did not analyse it as yet further than that--he knew that those two things were there; he might investigate them at his leisure.

In that easy, smiling fashion that he had developed from his earliest days as the surest protection for his own security and ease, he arranged everything around him to assure his tranquillity. Everything was not as yet arranged; it might take him six months, a year, two years for that arrangement...but he knew now that it would be done.

The second element in his comfort, his love of intrigue, would be satisfied here simply because everything was not, as yet, as he would have it. He would have hated to have tumbled into the place and found it just as he required it.

He liked to have things to move, to adjust, to arrange, just as when he entered a room he always, if he had the power, at once altered the chairs, the cushions. It was towards this final adjustment that his power of intrigue always worked. Once everything was adjusted he sank back luxuriously and surveyed it--and then, in all probability, was quickly tired of it and looked for new fields to conquer.

He could not remember a time when he had not been impelled to alter things for his comfort. He did not wish to be selfish about this, he was quite willing for every one else to do the same--indeed, he watched them with geniality and wondered why on earth they didn't. As a small boy at Harrow he had, with an imperturbable smile and a sense of humour that, in spite of his rotund youth and a general sense amongst his elders that he was "cheeky," won him popularity, worked always for his own comfort.

He secured it and, first as fag and afterwards as House-prefect, finally as School-prefect, did exactly what he wanted with everybody.

He did it by being, quite frankly, all things to all men, although never with sycophancy nor apparent falseness. He amused the bored, was confidential with the wicked, upright with the upright, and sympathetic with the unfortunate.

He was quite genuine in all these things. He was deeply interested in humanity, not for humanity's sake but his own. He bore no man any grudge, but if any one was in his way he worked hard until they were elsewhere. That removal attained, he wished them all the luck in the world.

He was ordained because he thought he could deal more easily with men as a parson. "Men always take clergymen for fools," he told his aunt, "and so they sometimes are...but not always." He knew he was not a fool, but he was not conceited. He simply thought that he had hit upon the one secret of life and could not understand why others had not done the same. Why do people worry so? was the amused speculation. "Deep emotions are simply not worth while," he decided on his coming of age. He liked women but his sense of humour prevented him from falling in love. He really did understand the sensual habits and desires of men and women but watched them from a distance through books and pictures and other men's stories. He was shocked by nothing--nor did he despise mankind. He thought that mankind did on the whole very well considering its difficulties. He was kind and often generous; he bore no man alive or dead any grudge. He refused absolutely to quarrel--"waste of time and temper."

His one danger was lest that passion for intrigue should go deeper than he allowed anything to go. Playing chess with mankind was to him, he declared, simply a means to an end. Perhaps once it had been so. But, as he grew older, there was a danger that the end should be swallowed by the means.

This danger he did not perceive; it was his one blindness. Finally he believed with La Rochefoucauld that "Pity is a passion which is wholly useless to a well-constituted mind."

At any rate he discovered that there was in Polchester a situation exactly suited to his powers. The town, or the Cathedral part of it, was dominated by one man, and that man a stupid, autocratic, retrogressive, good-natured child. He bore that child not the slightest ill-will, but it must go or, at any rate, its authority must be removed. He did, indeed, like Brandon, and through most of this affair he did not cease to like him, but he, Ronder, would never be comfortable so long as Brandon was there, he would never be free to take the steps that seemed to him good, he would be interfered with and patronised. He was greatly amused by Brandon's patronage, but it really was not a thing that could be allowed to remain.

If he saw, as he made his plans, that the man's heart and soul, his life, physical and spiritual, were involved--well he was sorry. It simply proved how foolish it was to allow your heart and soul to be concerned in anything.

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.

He started his investigations by paying calls on Bentinck-Major and Canon Foster. Bentinck-Major lived at the top of Orange Street, in a fine house with a garden, and Foster lived in one of four tumble-down buildings behind the Cathedral, known from time immemorial as Canon's Yard.

The afternoon of his visit was about three days after a dinner-party at the Castle. He had seen and heard enough at that dinner to amuse him for many a day; he considered it to have been one of the most entertaining dinners at which he had ever been present. It had been here that he had heard for the first time of the Pybus St. Anthony living. Brandon had been present, and he observed Brandon's nervousness, and gathered enough to realise that this would be a matter of considerable seriousness. He was to know a great deal more about it before the afternoon was over.

As he walked through the town on the way to Orange Street he came upon Ryle, the Precentor. Ryle looked the typical clergyman, tall but not too tall, here a smile and there a smile, with his soft black hat, his trousers too baggy at the knees, his boots and his gold watch-chain both too large.

He cared, with serious devotion, for the Cathedral music and sang the services beautifully, but he would have been able to give more time to his work were he not so continuously worrying as to whether people were vexed with him or no. His idea of Paradise was a place where he could chant eternal services and where everybody liked him. He was a good man, but weak, and therefore driven again and again into insincerity. It was as though there was for ever in front of him the consciousness of some secret in his past life that must on no account be discovered; but, poor man, he had no secret at all.

"Well, Precentor, and how are you?" said Ronder, beaming at him over his spectacles.

Ryle started. Ronder had come behind him. He liked the look of Ronder. He always preferred fat men to thin; they were much less malicious, he thought.

"Oh, thank you, Canon Ronder--very well, thank you. I didn't see you. Quite spring weather. Are you going my way?"

"I'm off to see Bentinck-Major."

"Oh, yes, Bentinck-Major...."

Ryle's first thought was--"Now is Bentinck-Major likely to have anything to say against me this afternoon?"

"I'm going up Orange Street too. It's the High School Governors' meeting, you know."

"Oh, yes, of course."

The two men started up the hill together. Ronder surveyed the scene around him with pleasure. Orange Street always satisfied his aesthetic sense. It was the street of the doctors, the solicitors, the dentists, the bankers, and the wealthier old maids of Polchester. The grey stone was of a charming age, the houses with their bow-windows, their pillared porches, their deep-set doors, their gleaming old-fashioned knockers, spoke eloquently of the day when the great Jane's Elizabeths and D'Arcys, Mrs. Morrises and Misses Bates found the world in a tea-cup, when passions were solved by matrimony and ambitions by the possession of a carriage and a fine pair of bays. But more than this was the way that the gardens and lawns and orchards ran unchecked in and out, up and down, here breaking into the street, there crowding a church with apple-trees, seeming to speak, at every step, of leisure and sunny days and lives free of care.

Ronder had never seen anything so pretty; something seemed to tell him that he would never see anything so pretty again.

Ryle was not a good conversationalist, because he had always before him the fear that some one might twist what he said into something really unpleasant, but, indeed, he found Ronder so agreeable that, as he told Mrs. Ryle when he got home, he "never noticed the hill at all."

"I hope you won't think me impertinent," said Ronder, "but I must tell you how charmed I was with the way that you sang the service on Sunday. You must have been complimented often enough before, but a stranger always has the right, I think, to say something. I'm a little critical, too, of that kind of thing, although, of course, an amateur...but--well, it was delightful."

Ryle flushed with pleasure to the very tips of his over-large ears.

"Oh, really, Canon...But indeed I hardly know what to say. You're too good. I do my poor best, but I can't help feeling that there is danger of one's becoming stale. I've been here a great many years now and I think some one fresh...."

"Well, often," said Ronder, "that is a danger. I know several cases where a change would be all for the better, but in your case there wasn't a trace of staleness. I do hope you won't think me presumptuous in saying this. I couldn't help myself. I must congratulate you, too, on the choir. How do you find Brockett as an organist?"

"Not quite all one would wish," said Ryle eagerly--and then, as though he remembered that some one might repeat this to Brockett, he added hurriedly, "Not that he doesn't do his best. He's an excellent fellow. Every one has their faults. It's only that he's a little too fond of adventures on his own account, likes to add things on the spur of the moment...a little fantastic sometimes."

"Quite so," said Ronder gravely. "That's rather what I'd thought myself. I noticed it once or twice last Sunday. But that's a fault on the right side. The boys behave admirably. I never saw better behaviour."

Ryle was now in his element. He let himself go, explaining this, defending that, apologising for one thing, hoping for another. Before he knew where he was he found himself at the turning above the monument that led to the High School.

"Here we part," he said.

"Why, so we do," cried Ronder.

"I do hope," said Ryle nervously, "that you'll come and see us soon. Mrs. Ryle will be delighted...."

"Why, of course I will," said Ronder. "Any day you like. Good-bye. Good- bye," and he went to Bentinck-Major's.

One look at Bentinck-Major's garden told a great deal about Bentinck- Major. The flower-beds, the trim over-green lawn, the neat paths, the trees in their fitting places, all spoke not only of a belief in material things but a desire also to demonstrate that one so believed....

One expected indeed to see the Bentinck-Major arms over the front-door. They were there in spirit if not in fact.

"Is the Canon in?" Ronder asked of a small and gaping page-boy.

He was in, it appeared. Would he see Canon Ronder? The page-boy disappeared and Ronder was able to observe three family trees framed in oak, a large china bowl with visiting-cards, and a huge round-faced clock that, even as he waited there, pompously announced that half-hour. Presently the Canon, like a shining Ganymede, came flying into the hall.

"My dear Ronder! But this is delightful. A little early for tea, perhaps. Indeed, my wife is, for the moment, out. What do you say to the library?"

Ronder had nothing to say against the library, and into it they went. A fine room with books in leather bindings, high windows, an oil painting of the Canon as a smart young curate, a magnificent writing-table, The Spectator and The Church Times near the fireplace, and two deep leather arm-chairs. Into these last two the clergymen sank.

Bentinck-Major put his fingers together, crossed his admirable legs, and looked interrogatively at his visitor.

"I'm lucky to catch you at home," said Ronder. "This isn't quite the time to call, I'm afraid. But the fact is that I want some advice."

"Quite so," said his host.

"I'm not a very modest man," said Ronder, laughing. "In fact, to tell you the truth, I don't believe very much in modesty. But there are times when it's just as well to admit one's incompetence. This is one of them--"

"Why, really, Canon," said Bentinck-Major, wishing to give the poor man encouragement.

"No, but I mean what I say. I don't consider myself a stupid man, but when one comes fresh into a place like this there are many things that one can't know, and that one must learn from some one wiser than oneself if one's to do any good."

"Oh, really, Canon," Bentinck-Major repeated. "If there's anything I can do--".

"There is. It isn't so much about the actual details of the work that I want your advice. Hart-Smith has left things in excellent condition, and I only hope that I shall be able to keep everything as straight as he has done. What I really want from you is some sort of bird's-eye view as to the whole situation. The Chapter, for instance. Of course, I've been here for some months now and have a little idea as to the people in the place, but you've been here so long that there are many things that you can tell me."

"Now, for instance," said Bentinck-Major, looking very wise and serious. "What kind of things?"

"I don't want you to tell me any secrets," said Ronder. "I only want your opinion, as a man of the world, as to how things stand--what really wants doing, who, Beside yourself, are the leading men here and in what directions they work. I needn't say that this conversation is confidential."

"Oh, of course, of course."

"Now, I don't know if I'm wrong, but it seems from what I've seen during the short time that I've been here that the general point of view is inclined to be a little too local. I believe you rather feel that yourself, although I may be prejudiced, coming straight as I have from London."

"It's odd that you should mention that, Canon," said Bentinck-Major. "You've put your finger on the weak spot at once. You're only saying what I've been crying aloud for the last ever so many years. A voice in the wilderness I've been, I'm afraid--a voice in the wilderness, although perhaps I _have_ managed to do a little something. But there's no doubt that the men here, excellent though they are, are a _little_ provincial. What else can you expect? They've been here for years. They have not had, most of them, the advantage of mingling with the great world. That I should have had a little more of that opportunity than my fellows here is nothing to my credit, but it does, beyond question, give one a wider view --a wider view. There's our dear Bishop for instance--a saint, if ever there was one. A saint, Ronder, I assure you. But there he is, hidden away at Carpledon--out of things, I'm afraid, although of course he does his best. Then there's Sampson. Well, I hardly need to tell you that he's not quite the man to make things hum. Not by his own fault I assure you. He does his best, but we are as we're made...yes. We can only use the gifts that God has given us, and God has not, undoubtedly, given the Dean quite the gifts that we need here."

He paused and waited. He was a cautious man and weighed his words.

"Then there's Brandon," said Ronder smiling. "There, if I may say so, is a splendid character, a man who gives his whole life and energy for the good of the place--who spares himself nothing."

There was a little pause. Bentinck-Major took advantage of it to look graver than ever.

"He strikes you like that, does he?" he said at last. "Well, in many ways I think you're right. Brandon is a good friend of mine--I may say that he thoroughly appreciates what I've done for this place. But he is-- quite between ourselves--how shall I put it?--just a little autocratic. Perhaps that's too strong a word, but he is, some think, a little too inclined to fancy that he runs the Cathedral! That, mind you, is only the opinion of some here, and I don't know that I should entirely associate myself with it, but perhaps there is something in it. He is, as you can see, a man of strong will and, again between ourselves, of a considerable temper. This will not, I'm sure, go further than ourselves?"

"Absolutely not," said Ronder.

"Things have been a little slack here for several years, and although I've done my own little best, what is one against so many, if you understand what I mean?"

"Quite," said Ronder.

"Well, nobody could call Brandon an unenergetic man--quite the reverse. And, to put it frankly, to oppose him one needs courage. Now I may say that I've opposed him on a number of occasions but have had no backing. Brandon, when he's angry, is no light opponent, and the result has been that he's had, I'm afraid, a great deal of his own way."

"You're afraid?" said Ronder.

Bentinck-Major seemed a little nervous at being caught up so quickly. He looked at Ronder suspiciously. His voice was sharper than it had been.

"Oh, I like Brandon--don't make any mistake about that. He and I together have done some excellent things here. In many ways he's admirable. I don't know what I'd have done sometimes without his backing. All I mean is that he is perhaps a little hasty sometimes."

"Quite," said Ronder. "I can't tell you how you've helped me by what you've told me. I'm sure you're right in everything you've said. If you were to give me a tip then, you'd say that I couldn't do better than follow Brandon. I'll remember that."

"Well, no," said Bentinck-Major rather hastily. "I don't know that I'd quite say that either. Brandon is often wrong. I'm not sure either that he has quite the influence he had. That silly little incident of the elephant the other day--you heard that, didn't you?--well, a trivial thing, but one saw by the way that the town took it that the Archdeacon isn't quite where he was. I agree with him entirely in his policy--to keep things as they always have been. That's the only way to save our Church, in my opinion. As soon as they tell me an idea's new, that's enough for me...I'm down on it at once. But what I do think is that his diplomacy is often faulty. He rushes at things like a bull-- exactly like a bull. A little too confident always. No, if you won't think me conceited--and I believe I'm a modest man--you couldn't do better than come to me--talk things over with me, you know. I'm sure we'll see alike about many things."

"I'm sure we will," said Ronder. "Thank you very much. As you've been so kind I'm sure you won't mind my asking you a few questions. I hope I'm not keeping you from anything."

"Not at all. Not at all," said Bentinck-Major very graciously, and stretching his plump little body back into the arm-chair. "Ask as many questions as you like and I'll do my best to answer them."

Ronder did then, during the next half-hour, ask a great many questions, and he received a great many answers. The answers may not have told him overmuch about the things that he wanted to know, but they did tell him a great deal about Bentinck-Major.

The clock struck four.

Ronder got up.

"You don't know how you've helped me," he said. "You've told me exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you so very much."

Bentinck-Major looked gratified. He had, in fact, thoroughly enjoyed himself.

"Oh, but you'll stay and have some tea, won't you?"

"I'm afraid I can't do that. I've got a pretty busy afternoon still in front of me."

"My wife will be so disappointed."

"You'll let me come another day, won't you?"

"Of course. Of course."

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.

"May I come in for a moment?" said Ronder. "I won't keep you long."

Foster stared at his visitor, said nothing, opened the door a little wider, and stood aside. Ronder accepted this as an invitation and came in.

"You'd better come into the other room," said Foster, looking about him as though he had been just ruthlessly awakened from an important dream. They passed through a little passage and an untidy sitting-room into the study. This was a place piled high with books and its only furniture was a deal table and two straw-bottomed chairs. At the table Foster had obviously been working. Books lay about it and papers, and there was also a pile of manuscript. Foster looked around him, caught his large ears in his fingers and cracked them, and then suddenly said:

"You'd better sit down. What can I do for you?"

Ronder sat down. It was at once apparent that, whatever the state of the rooms might be, his reluctant host was suddenly very wide awake indeed. He felt, what he had known from the very first meeting, that he was in contact here with a man of brain, of independence, of character. His capacity for amused admiration that was one of the strongest things in him, was roused to the full. Another thing that he had also by now perceived was that Foster was not that type, by now so familiar to us in the pages of French and English fiction, of the lost and bewildered old clergyman whose long nose has been for so many years buried in dusty books that he is unable to smell the real world. Foster was neither lost nor bewildered. He was very much all there.

What could he do for Ronder? Ronder was, for a moment, uncertain. Here, he was happy to think, he must go with the greatest care. He did not smile as he had smiled upon Bentinck-Major. He spoke to Foster as to an equal.

"I can see you're busy," he said. "All the same I'm not going to apologise for coming. I'll tell you frankly that I want your help. At the same time I'll tell you that I don't care whether you give it me or no."

"In what way can I help you?" asked Foster coldly.

"There's to be a Chapter Meeting in a few days' time, isn't there? Honestly I haven't been here quite long enough yet to know how things stand. Questions may come up, although there's nothing very important this time, I believe. But there may be important things brewing. Now you've been here a great many years and you have your opinion of how things should go. I want your idea of some of the conditions."

"You've come to spy out the land, in fact?"

"Put it that way if you like," said Ronder seriously, "although I don't think spying is exactly the word. You're perfectly at liberty, I mean, to tell anybody that I've been to see you and to repeat to anybody what I say. It simply is that I don't care to take on all the work that's being shoved on to my shoulders without getting the views of those who know the place well."

"Oh, if it's my views you want," cried Foster, suddenly raising his voice and almost shouting, "they're easy enough to discover. They are simply that everything here is abominable, going to wrack and ruin...Now you know what I think."

He looked down at his manuscript as much as to say, "Well, good afternoon."

"Going to ruin in what way?" asked Ronder.

"In the way that the country is going to ruin--because it has turned its back upon God."

There was a pause. Suddenly Foster flung out, "Do you believe in God, Canon Ronder?"

"I think," said Ronder, "the fact that I'm in the position I'm in----"

"Nonsense," interrupted Foster. "That's anybody's answer. You don't look like a spiritual man."

"I'm fat, if that's what you mean," said Ronder smiling. "That's my misfortune."

"If I've been rude," said Foster more mildly, "forgive me. I am rude these days. I've given up trying not to be. The truth is that I'm sick to the heart with all their worldliness, shams, lies, selfishness, idleness. You may be better than they. You may not. I don't know. If you've come here determined to wake them all up and improve things, then I wish you God-speed. But you won't do it. You needn't think you will. If you've come like the rest to get what you can out of it, then I don't think you'll find my company good for you."

"I certainly haven't come to wake them up," said Ronder. "I don't believe that to be my duty. I'm not made that way. Nor can I honestly believe things to be as bad as you say. But I do intend, with God's help, to do my best. If that's not good enough for you, then you must abandon me to my fate."

Foster seemed to appreciate that. He nodded his head.

"That's honest at any rate," he said. "It's the first honest thing I've heard here for a long time except from the Bishop. To tell you the truth, I had thought you were going to work in with Brandon. One more of his sheep. If that were to be so the less we saw of one another the better."

"I have not been here long enough," said Ronder, "to think of working in with anybody. And I don't wish to take sides. There's my duty to the Cathedral. I shall work for that and let the rest go."

"There's your duty to God," said Foster vehemently. "That's the thing that everybody here's forgotten. But you don't sound as though you'd go Brandon's way. That's something in your favour."

"Why should one go Brandon's way?" Ronder asked.

"Why? Why? Why? Why do sheep huddle together when the dog barks at their heels?...But I respect him. Don't you mistake me. He's a man to be respected. He's got courage. He cares for the Cathedral. He's a hundred years behind, that's all. He's read nothing, he knows nothing, he's a child--and does infinite harm...." He looked up at Ronder and said quite mildly, "Is there anything more you want to know?"

"There's talk," said Ronder, "about the living at Pybus St. Anthony. It's apparently an important place, and when there's an appointment I should like to be able to form an opinion about the best man----"

"What! is Morrison dead?" said Foster eagerly.

"No, but very ill, I believe."

"Well, there's only one possible appointment for that place, and that is Wistons."

"Wistons?" repeated Ronder.

"Yes, yes," said Foster impatiently, "the author of The New Apocalypse--the rector of St. Edward's, Hawston."

Ronder remembered. "A stranger?" he said. "I thought that it would have to be some one in the diocese."

Foster did not hear him. "I've been waiting for this--to get Wistons here --for years," he said. "A wonderful man--a great man. He'll wake the place up. We must have him. As to local men, the more strangers we let in here the better."

"Brandon said something about a man called Forsyth--Rex Forsyth?"

Foster smiled grimly. "Yes--he would," he said, "that's just his kind of appointment. Well, if he tries to pull that through there'll be such a battle as this place has never seen."

Ronder said slowly. "I like your idea of Wistons. That sounds interesting."

Foster looked at him with a new intensity.

"Would you help me about that?" he asked.

"I don't know quite where I am yet," said Ronder, "but I think you'll find me a friend rather than an enemy, Foster."

"I don't care what you are," said Foster. "So far as my feelings or happiness go, nothing matters. But to have Wistons here--in this place.... Oh, what we could do! What we could do!"

He seemed to be lost in a dream. Five minutes later he roused himself to say good-bye. Ronder once more at the top of the stairs felt about him again the strange stillness of the house.

Chapter VIII

Son--Father

Falk Brandon was still, in reality, a boy. He, of course, did not know this and would have been very indignant had any one told him so; it was nevertheless the truth.

There is a kind of confidence of youth that has great charm, a sort of assumption of grown-up manners and worldly ways that is accompanied with an ingenuous belief in human nature, a naïve trust in human goodness. One sees it sometimes in books, in stories that are like a charade acted by children dressed in their elders' clothes, and although these tales are nothing but fairy stories in their actual relation to life, the sincerity of their belief in life, and a kind of freshness that come from ignorance, give them a power of their own.

Falk had some of this charm and power just as his father had, but whereas his father would keep it all his days, Falk would certainly lose it as he learnt more and went more into the world. But as yet he had not lost it.

This emotion that had now gained such control over him was the first real emotion of his life, and he did not know in the least how to deal with it. He was like a man caught in a baffling fog. He did not know in the least whether he were in love with this girl, he did not know what he wanted to do with her, he sometimes fancied that he hated her, he could not see her clearly either mentally or physically; he only knew that he could not keep away from her, and that with every meeting he approached more nearly the moment when he would commit some desperate action that he would probably regret for the rest of his life.

But although he could not see her clearly he could see sharply enough the other side of the situation--the practical, home, filial side. It was strange how, as the affair advanced, he was more and more conscious of his father. It was as though he were an outsider, a friend of his father's, but no relation to the family, who watched a calamity approach ever more closely and was powerless to stop it. Although he was only a boy he realised very sufficiently his father's love for him and pride in him. He realized, too, his father's dependence upon his dignity and position in the town, and, last and most important of all, his father's passionate devotion to the Cathedral. All these things would be bruised were he, Falk, involved in any local scandal. Here he saw into himself and, with a bitterness and humility that were quite new to him, despised himself. He knew, as though he saw future events passing in procession before him, that if such a scandal did break out he would not be able to stay in the place and face it--not because he himself feared any human being alive, but because he could not see his father suffer under it.

Well, then, since he saw so clearly, why not abandon it all? Why not run away, obtain some kind of work in London and leave Polchester until the madness had passed away from him?

He could not go.

He would have been one of the first to scorn another man in such a position, to mock his weakness and despise him. Well, let that be so. He despised himself but--he could not go.

He was always telling himself that soon the situation would clear and that he would then know how to act. Until that happened he must see her, must talk to her, must be with her, must watch her. They had had, by now, a number of meetings, always in the evening by the river, when her father was away, up in the town.

He had kissed her twice. She had been quite passive on each occasion, watching him ironically with a sort of dry amusement. She had given him no sign that she cared for him, and their conversation had always been bare and unsatisfactory. Once she had said to him with sudden passion:

"I want to get away out of this." He had asked her where she wanted to go.

"Anywhere--London." He had asked her whether she would go with him.

"I would go with any one," she had said. Afterwards she added: "But you won't take me."

"Why not?" he had asked.

"Because I'm not in love with you."

"You may be--yet."

"I'd be anything to get away," she had replied.

On a lovely evening he went down to see her, determined that this time he would give himself some definite answer. Just before he turned down to the river he passed Samuel Hogg. That large and smiling gentleman, a fat cigar between his lips, was sauntering, with a friend, on his way to Murdock's billiard tables.

"Evenin', Mr. Brandon."

"Good evening, Hogg."

"Lovely weather."

"Lovely."

The shadows, faintly pink on the rise of the hill, engulfed his fat body. Falk wondered as he had before now done many times, How much does he know? What's he thinking? What's he want?...The river, at high tide, very gently lapped the side of the old wall. Its colour to-night was pure crystal green, the banks and the hills smoky grey behind it. Tiny pink clouds ran in little fleets across the sky, chasing one another in and out between the streamers of smoke that rose from the tranquil chimneys. Seatown was at rest this evening, scarcely a sound came from the old houses; the birds could be heard calling from the meadows beyond the river. The pink clouds faded into a rosy shadow, then that in its turn gave way to a sky faintly green and pointed with stars. Grey mist enveloped the meadows and the river, and the birds cried no longer. There was a smell of onions and rank seaweed in the air.

Falk's love-story pursued at first its usual realistic course. She was there near the waterfall waiting for him; they had very little to say to one another. She was depressed to-night, and he fancied that she had been crying. She was not so attractive to him in such a mood. He liked her best when she was intolerant, scornful, aloof. To-night, although she showed no signs of caring for him, she surrendered herself absolutely. He could do what he liked with her. But he did not want to do anything with her.

She leaned over the Seatown wall looking desolately in front of her.

At last she turned round to him and asked him what she had asked him before:

"What do you come after me for?"

"I don't know," he said.

"It isn't because you love me."

"I don't know."

"I know--there's no mistakin' it when it's there. I've lain awake a lot o' nights wondering what you're after. You must have your reasons. You take a deal o' trouble."

Then she put her hand on his. It was the first time that she had ever, of her own accord, touched him.

"I'm gettin' to like you," she said. "Seein' so much of you, I suppose. You're only a boy when all's said. And then, somehow or another, men don't go after me. You're the only one that ever has. They say I'm stuck up... Oh, man, but I'm unhappy here at home!"

"Well, then--you'd better come away with me--to London."

Even as he said it he would have caught the words back. What use for them to go? Nothing to live on, no true companionship ...there could be only one end to that.

But she shook her head.

"No--if you cared for me enough, mebbe I'd go. But I don't know that we'd be together long if we did. I want my own life, my own, own, own life! I can look after myself all right...I'll be off by myself alone one day."

Then suddenly he wanted her as urgently as he had ever done.

"No, you must never do that," he said. "If you go it must be with me. You must have some one to look after you. You don't know what London's like."

He caught her in his arms and kissed her passionately, and she seemed to him a new woman altogether, created by her threat that she would go away alone.

She passively let him kiss her, then with a little turn in his arms and a little sigh she very gently kissed him of her own will.

"I believe I could care for 'ee," she said softly. "And I want to care for some one terrible bad."

They were nearer in spirit than they had ever been before; an emotion of simple human companionship had crept into the unsettled disturbance and quieted it and deepened it. She wore in his eyes a new aspect, something wise and reasonable and comfortable. She would never be quite so mysterious to him again, but her hold on him now was firmer. He was suddenly sorry for her as well as for himself.

For the first time he left her that night with a sense that comradeship might grow between them.

But as he went back up the hill he was terribly depressed and humiliated. He hated and despised himself for longing after something that he did not really want. He had always, he fancied, done that, as though there would never be time enough in life for all the things that he would wish to test and to reject.

When he went to bed that night he was in rebellion with all the world, but before he fell asleep Annie Hogg seemed to come to him, a gentler, kinder spirit, and to say to him, "It'll be all right.... I'll look after 'ee.... I'll look after 'ee," and he seemed to sink to sleep in her arms.

Next morning Falk and Joan had breakfast alone with their father, a headache having laid Mrs. Brandon low. Falk was often late for breakfast, but to-day had woken very early, had got up and gone out and walked through the grey mist, turning his own particular trouble over and over in his mind. To-day Annie had faded back from him again; that tenderness that he had felt for her last night seemed to have vanished, and he was aware only of a savage longing to shake himself free of his burden. He had visions this morning of going up to London and looking for work....

Joan saw that to-day was a "Chapter morning" day. She always knew by her father's appearance when there was to be a Chapter Meeting. He had then an extra gloss, an added splendour, and also an added importance. He really was the smartest old thing, she thought, looking at him this morning with affectionate pride. He looked as though he spent his time in springing in and out of cold baths.

The importance was there too. He had the Glebshire Morning News propped up in front of him, and every now and then he would poke his fine head up over it and look at his children and the breakfast-table and give them a little of the world's news. In former days it had been only at the risk of their little lives that they had spoken to one another. Now, although restrictions had broken down, they would always hear, if their voices were loud:

"Come, children...come, come. Mayn't your father read the newspaper in quiet? Plenty of time to chatter during the rest of the day."

He would break forth into little sentences and exclamations as he read. "Well, that's settled Burnett's hash.--Serve him right, too.... Dear, dear, five shillings a hundred now. Phillpott's going to St. Lummen! What an appointment!..." and so on.

Sometimes he would grow so deeply agitated that he would push the paper away from him and wave vaguely about the table with his hands as though he were learning to swim, letting out at the same time little snorts of indignation and wonder:

"The fools! The idiots! Savage, of all men! Fancy listening to him! Well, they'll only get what they deserve for their weakness. I wrote to Benson, too--might as well have written to a rhinoceros. Toast, please, Joan!-- Toast, toast. Didn't you hear me? Savage! What can they be thinking of? Yes, and butter.... Of course I said butter."

But on "Chapter Days" it was difficult for the newspaper to disturb him. His mind was filled with thoughts for the plan and policy of the morning. It was unfortunately impossible for him ever to grasp two things at the same time, and this made his reasoning and the development of any plan that he had rather slow. When the Chapter was to be an important one he would not look at the newspaper at all and would eat scarcely any breakfast. To-day, because the Chapter was a little one, he allowed himself to consider the outside world. That really was the beginning of his misfortune, because the paper this morning contained a very vivid picture of the loss of the Drummond Castle. That was an old story by this time, but here was some especial account that provided new details and circumstances, giving a fresh vivid horror to the scene even at this distance of time.

Brandon tried not to read the thing. He made it a rule that he would not distress himself with the thought of evils that he could not cure. That is what he told himself, but indeed his whole life was spent in warding off and shutting out and refusing to listen.

He had told himself many years ago that it was a perfect world and that God had made it and that God was good. To maintain this belief it was necessary that one should not be "Presumptuous." It was "Presumptuous" to imagine for a moment about any single thing that it was a "mistake." If anything were evil or painful it was there to "try and test" us.... A kind of spring-board over the waters of salvation.

Once, some years ago, a wicked atheist had written an article in a magazine manifesting how evil nature was, how the animals preyed upon one another, how everything from the tiniest insect to the largest elephant suffered and suffered and suffered. How even the vegetation lived a short life of agony and frustration, and then fell into foul decay.... Brandon had read the article against his will, and had then hated the writer of it with so deep a hatred that he would have had him horse-whipped, had he had the power. The article upset him for days, and it was only by asserting to himself again and again that it was untrue, by watching kittens at play and birds singing on the branches and roses bursting from bud to bloom, that he could reassure himself.

Now to-day here was the old distress back again. There was no doubt but that those men and women on the Drummond Castle had suffered in order to win quite securely for themselves a crown of glory. He ought to envy them, to regret that he had not been given the same chance, and yet-- and yet----

He pushed the paper impatiently away from him. It was good that there was nothing important to be discussed at Chapter this morning, because really he was not in the mood to fight battles. He sighed. Why was it always he that had to fight battles? He had indeed the burden of the whole town upon his shoulders. And at that secretly he felt a great joy. He was glad--yes, he was glad that he had....

As he looked over at Joan and Folk he felt tenderly towards them. His reading then about the Drummond Castle made him anxious that they should have a good time and be happy. It might be better for them that they should suffer; nevertheless, if they could be sure of heaven and at the same time not suffer too badly he would be glad.

Suddenly then, across the breakfast-table, a picture drove itself in front of him--a picture of Joan with her baby-face, struggling in the water.... She screamed; she tried to catch on to the side of a boat with her hand. Some one struck her....

With a shudder of disgust he drove it from him.

"Pah!" he cried aloud, getting up from the table.

"What is it, father?" Joan asked.

"People oughtn't to be allowed to write such things," he said, and went to his study.

When an hour later he sallied forth to the Chapter Meeting he had recovered his equanimity. His mind now was nailed to the business on hand. Most innocently as he crossed the Cathedral Green he strutted, his head up, his brow stern, his hands crossed behind his back. The choristers coming in from the choir-school practice in the Cathedral passed him in a ragged line. They all touched their mortar-boards and he smiled benignly upon them, reserving a rather stern glance for Brockett, the organist, of whose musical eccentricities he did not at all approve.

Little remained now of the original Chapter House which had once been a continuation of Saint Margaret's Chapel. Some extremely fine Early Norman arches which were once part of the Chapter House are still there and may be seen at the southern end of the Cloisters. Here, too, are traces of the dormitory and infirmary which formerly stood there. The present Chapter House consists of two rooms adjoining the Cloisters, once a hall used by the monks as a large refectory. There is still a timber roof of late thirteenth century work, and this is supposed to have been once part of the old pilgrims' or strangers' hall. The larger of the two rooms is reserved for the Chapter Meetings, the smaller being used for minor meetings and informal discussions.

The Archdeacon was a little late as, I am afraid, he liked to be when he was sure that others would be punctual. Nothing, however, annoyed him more than to find others late when he himself was in time. There they all were and how exactly he knew how they would all be!

There was the long oak table, blotting paper and writing materials neatly placed before each seat, there the fine walls in which he always took so great a pride, with the portraits of the Polchester Bishops in grand succession upon them. At the head of the table was the Dean, nervously with anxious smiles looking about him. On the right was Brandon's seat; on the left Witheram, seriously approaching the business of the day as though his very life depended upon it; then Bentinck-Major, his hands looking as though they had been manicured; next to him Ryle, laughing obsequiously at some fashionable joke that Bentinck-Major had delivered to him; opposite to him Foster, looking as though he had not had a meal for a week and badly shaved with a cut on his chin; and next to him Ronder.

At the bottom of the table was little Bond, the Chapter Clerk, sucking his pencil.

Brandon took his place with dignified apologies for his late arrival.

"Let us ask God for His blessing on our work to-day," said the Dean.

A prayer followed, then general rustling and shuffling, blowing of noses, coughing and even, from the surprised and consternated Ryle, a sneeze-- then the business of the day began. The minutes of the last meeting were read, and there was a little amiable discussion. At once Brandon was conscious of Ronder. Why? He could not tell and was the more uncomfortable. The man said nothing. He had not been present at the last meeting and could therefore have nothing to say to this part of the business. He sat there, his spectacles catching the light from the opposite windows so that he seemed to have no eyes. His chubby body, the position in which he was sitting, hunched up, leaning forward on his arms, spoke of perfect and almost sleepy content. His round face and fat cheeks gave him the air of a man to whom business was a tiresome and unnecessary interference with the pleasures of life.

Nevertheless, Brandon was so deeply aware of Ronder that again and again, against his will, his eyes wandered in his direction. Once or twice Brandon said something, not because he had anything really to say, but because he wanted to impress himself upon Ronder. All agreed with him in the complacent and contented way that they had always agreed....

Then his consciousness of Ronder extended and gave him a new consciousness of the other men. He had known for so long exactly how they looked and the words that they would say, that they were, to him, rather like the stone images of the Twelve Apostles in the niches round the West Door. Today they jumped in a moment into new life. Yesterday he could have calculated to a nicety the attitude that they would have; now they seemed to have been blown askew with a new wind. Because he noticed these things it does not mean that he was generally perceptive. He had always been very sharp to perceive anything that concerned his own position.

Business proceeded and every one displayed his own especial characteristics. Nothing arose that concerned Ronder. Every one's personal opinion about every one else was clearly apparent. It was a fine thing, for instance, to observe Foster's scorn and contempt whilst Bentinck-Major explained his little idea about certain little improvements that he, as Chancellor, might naturally suggest, or Ryle's attitude of goodwill to all and sundry as he apologised for certain of Brockett's voluntaries and assured Brandon on one side that "something should be done about it," and agreed with Bentinck-Major on the other that it was indeed agreeable to hear sometimes music a little more advanced and original than one usually found in Cathedrals.

Brandon sniffed something of incipient rebellion in Bentinck-Major's attitude and looked across the table severely. Bentinck-Major blinked and nervously examined his nails.

"Of course," said the Archdeacon in his most solemn manner, "there may be people who wish to turn the Cathedral into a music-hall. I don't say there are, but there may be. In these strange times nothing would astonish me. In my own humble opinion what was good enough for our fathers is good enough for us. However, don't let my opinion influence any one."

"I assure you, Archdeacon," said Bentinck-Major. Witheram earnestly assured every one that he was certain there need be no alarm. They could trust the Precentor to see.... There was a general murmur. Yes, they could trust the Precentor.

This little matter being settled, the meeting was very near an agreeable conclusion and the Dean was beginning to congratulate himself on the early return to his botany--when, unfortunately, there cropped up the question of the garden-roller.

This matter of the garden-roller was a simple one enough. The Cathedral School had some months ago requested the Chapter to allow it to purchase for itself a new garden-roller. Such an article was seriously needed for the new cricket-field. It was true that the School already possessed two garden-rollers, but one of these was very small--"quite a baby one," Dennison, the headmaster, explained pathetically--and the other could not possibly cover all the work that it had to do. The School grounds were large ones.

The matter, which was one that mainly concerned the Treasury side of the Chapter, had been discussed at the last meeting, and there had been a good deal of argument about it.

Brandon had then vetoed it, not because he cared in the least whether or no the School had a garden-roller, but because, Hart-Smith having left and Ronder being not yet with them, he was in charge, for the moment, of the Cathedral funds. He liked to feel his power, and so he refused as many things as possible. Had it not been only a temporary glory--had he been permanent Treasurer--he would in all probability have acted in exactly the opposite way and allowed everybody to have everything.

"There's the question of the garden-roller," said Witheram, just as the Dean was about to propose that they should close with a prayer.

"I've got it here on the minutes," said the Chapter Clerk severely.

"Oh, dear, yes," said the Dean, looking about him rather piteously. "Now what shall we do about it?"

"Let 'em have it," said Foster, glaring across at Brandon and shutting his mouth like a trap.

This was a direct challenge. Brandon felt his breast charged with the noble anger that always filled it when Foster said anything.

"I must confess," he said, covering, as he always did when he intended something to be final, the Dean with his eye, "that I thought that this was quite definitely settled at last Chapter; I understood--I may of course have been mistaken--that we considered that we could not afford the thing and that the School must wait."

"Well, Archdeacon," said the Dean nervously (he knew of old the danger- signals in Brandon's flashing eyes), "I must confess that I hadn't thought it quite so definite as that. Certainly we discussed the expense of the affair."

"I think the Archdeacon's right," said Bentinck-Major, who wanted to win his way back to favour after the little mistake about the music. "It was settled, I think."

"Nothing of the kind," said Foster fiercely. "We settled nothing."

"How does it read on the minutes?" asked the Dean nervously.

"Postponed until the next meeting," said the Clerk.

"At any rate," said Brandon, feeling that this absurd discussion had gone on quite long enough, "the matter is simple enough. It can be settled immediately. Any one who has gone into the matter at all closely will have discovered first that the School doesn't need a roller--they've enough already--secondly, that the Treasury cannot possibly at the present moment afford to buy a new one."

"I really must protest, Archdeacon," said Foster, "this is going too far. In the first place, have you yourself gone into the case?"

Brandon paused before he answered. He felt that all eyes were upon him. He also felt that Foster had been stirred to a new strength of hostility by some one--he fancied he knew by whom. Moreover, had he gone into it? He was aware with a stirring of impatience that he had not. He had intended to do so, but time had been short, the matter had not seemed of sufficient importance....

"I certainly have gone into it," he said, "quite as far as the case deserves. The facts are clear."

"The facts are not clear," said Foster angrily. "I say that the School should have this roller and that we are behaving with abominable meanness in preventing it"; and he banged his fist upon the table.

"If that charge of meanness is intended personally,..." said Brandon angrily.

"I assure you, Archdeacon,..." said Ryle. The Dean raised a hand in protest.

"I don't think," he said, "that anything here is ever intended personally. We must never forget that we are in God's House. Of course, this is an affair that really should be in the hands of the Treasury. But I'm afraid that Canon Ronder can hardly be expected in the short time that he's been with us to have investigated this little matter."

Every one looked at Ronder. There was a pleasant sense of drama in the affair. Brandon was gazing at the portraits above the table and pretending to be outside the whole business; in reality, his heart beat angrily. His word should have been enough, in earlier days would have been. Everything now was topsy-turvy.

"As a matter of fact," said Ronder, "I have gone into the matter. I saw that it was one of the most urgent questions on the Agenda. Unimportant though it may sound, I believe that the School cricket will be entirely held up this summer if they don't secure their roller. They intend, I believe, to get a roller by private subscription if we refuse it to them, and that, gentlemen, would be, I cannot help feeling, rather ignominious for us. I have been into the question of prices and have examined some catalogues. I find that the expense of a good garden-roller is really not a very great one. One that I think the Treasury could sustain without serious inconvenience...."

"You think then, Canon, that we should allow the roller?" said the Dean.

"I certainly do," said Ronder.

Brandon felt the impression that had been created. He knew that they were all thinking amongst themselves: "Well, here's an efficient man!"

He burst out:

"I'm afraid that I cannot agree with Canon Ronder. If he will allow me to say so, he has not been, as yet, long enough in the place to know how things really stand. I have nothing to say against Dennison, but he has obviously put his case very plausibly, but those who have known the School and its methods for many years have perhaps a prior right of judgment over Canon Ronder, who's known it for so short a time."

"Absurd. Absurd," cried Foster. "It isn't a case of knowing the School. It's simply a question of whether the Chapter can afford it. Canon Ronder, who is Treasurer, says that it can. That ought to be enough for anybody."

The atmosphere was now very warm indeed. There was every likelihood of several gentlemen speaking at once. Witheram looked anxious, Bentinck- Major malicious, Ryle nervous, Foster triumphant, and Brandon furious. Only Ronder seemed unconcerned.

The Dean, distress in his heart, raised his hand.

"As there seems to be some difference of opinion in this matter," he said, "I think we had better vote upon it. Those in favour of the roller being granted to the School please signify."

Ronder, Foster and Witheram raised their hands.

"And those against?" said the Dean.

Brandon, Ryle and Bentinck-Major were against.

"I'm afraid," said the Dean, smiling anxiously, "that it will be for me to give the casting vote." He paused for a moment. Then, looking straight across the table at the Clerk, he said:

"I think I must decide for the roller. Canon Ronder seems to me to have proved his case."

Every one, except possibly Ronder, was aware that this was the first occasion for many years that any motion of Brandon's had been defeated....

Without waiting for any further business the Archdeacon gathered together his papers and, looking neither to right nor left, strode from the room.

Book II

The Whispering Gallery

Chapter I

Five O'Clock--The Green Cloud

The cloud seemed to creep like smoke from the funnel of the Cathedral tower. The sun was setting in a fiery wreath of bubbling haze, shading in rosy mist the mountains of grey stone. The little cloud, at first in the shadowy air light green and shaped like a ring, twisted spirally, then, spreading, washed out and lay like a pool of water against the smoking sunset.

Green like the Black Bishop's ring.... Lying there, afterwards, until the orange had faded and the sky, deserted by the sun, was milk-white. The mists descended. The Cathedral chimes struck five. February night, cold, smoke-misted, enwrapped the town.

At a quarter to five Evensong was over and Cobbett was putting out the candles in the choir. Two figures slowly passed down the darkening nave.

Outside the west door they paused, gazing at the splendour of the fiery sky.

"It's cold, but there'll be stars," Ronder said.

Stars. Cold. Brandon shivered. Something was wrong with him. His heart had clap-clapped during the Anthem as though a cart with heavy wheels had rumbled there. He looked suspiciously at Ronder. He did not like the man, confidently standing there addressing the sky as though he owned it. He would have liked the sunset for himself.

"Well, good-night, Canon," brusquely. He moved away.

But Ronder followed him.

"One moment, Archdeacon.... Excuse me.... I have been wanting an opportunity...."

Brandon paused. The man was nervous. Brandon liked that.

"Yes?" he said.

The rosy light was fading. Strange that little green cloud rising like smoke from the tower....

"At the last Chapter we were on opposite sides. I want to say how greatly I've regretted that. I feel that we don't know one another as we should. I wonder if you would allow me..."

The light was fading--Ronder's spectacles shone, his body in shadow.

"...to see something more of you--to have a real talk with you?"

Brandon smiled grimly to himself in the dusk. This fool! He was afraid then. He saw himself hatless in Bennett's shop; outside, the jeering crowd.

"I'm afraid, Canon Ronder, that we shall never see eye to eye here about many things. If you will allow me to say so, you have perhaps not been here quite long enough to understand the real needs of this diocese. You must go slowly here--more slowly than perhaps you are prepared for. We are not Modernists here."

The spectacles, alone visible, answered: "Well, let us discuss it then. Let us talk things over. Let me ask you at once, Have you something against me, something that I have done unwittingly? I have fancied lately a personal note.... I am absurdly sensitive, but if there is anything that I have done, please let me apologise for it. I want you to tell me."

Anything that he had done? The Archdeacon smiled grimly to himself in the dusk.

"I really don't think, Canon, that talking things over will help us. There is really nothing to discuss.... Good-night."

The green cloud was gone. Ronder, invisible now, remained in the shadow of the great door.

II

Beside the river, above the mill, a woman's body was black against the gold-crested water. She leaned over the little bridge, her body strong, confident in its physical strength, her hands clasped, her eyes meditative.

No need for secrecy to-night. Her father was in Drymouth for two days. Quarter to five. The chimes struck out clear across the town. Hearing them she looked back and saw the sky a flood of red behind the Cathedral. She longed for Falk to-night, a new longing. He was better than she had supposed, far, far better. A good boy, tender and warm-hearted. To be trusted. Her friend. At first he had stood to her only for a means of freedom. Freedom from this horrible place, from this horrible man, her father, more horrible than any others knew. Her mother had known. She shivered, seeing that body, heavy-breasted, dull white, as, stripped to the waist, he bent over the bed to strike. Her mother's cry, a little moan.... She shivered again, staring into the sunset for Falk....

He was with her. They leant over the bridge together, his arm around her. They said very little.

She looked back.

"See that strange cloud? Green. Ever seen a green cloud before? Ah, it's peaceful here."

She turned and looked into his face. As the dusk came down she stroked his hair. He put his arm round her and held her close to him.

III

The lamps in the High Street suddenly flaring beat out the sky. There above the street itself the fiery sunset had not extended; the fair watery space was pale egg-blue; as the chimes so near at hand struck a quarter to five the pale colour began slowly to drain away, leaving ashen china shades behind it, and up to these shades the orange street-lights extended, patronising, flaunting.