He stared, transported, his comfort flowing full-tide now into his soul.
"Exactly!" he said, suddenly turning his eyes full on Wistons. "The Christian Church has made a golden calf of its dogmas. The Calf is worshipped, the Cathedral enshrines it."
Wistons gave a swift curious stab of a glance. Ronder caught it; he flushed. "You think it strange of me to say that?" he asked. "I can see that you do. Let me be frank with you. It has been my trouble all my life that I can see every side of a question. I am with the modernists, but at the same time I can understand how dangerous it must seem to the dogmatists to abandon even an inch of the country that Paul conquered for them. I"m afraid, Wistons, that I see life in terms of men and women rather than of creeds. I want men to be happy and at peace with one another. And if to form a new creed or to abandon an old one leads to men"s deeper religious happiness, well, then...." He waved his hands.
Wistons, speaking again as it were to himself, answered, "I care only for Jesus Christ. He is overshadowed now by all the great buildings that men have raised for Him. He is lost to our view; we must recover Him. Him!
Him! Only Him! To serve Him, to be near Him, almost to feel the touch of His hand on one"s head, that is the whole of life to me. And now He is hard to come to, harder every year...." He got up. "I didn"t come to say more than that.
"It"s the Cathedral, Ronder, that I fear. Don"t you yourself sometimes feel that it has, by now, a spirit of its own, a life, a force that all the past years and all the worship that it has had have given it? Don"t you even feel that? That it has become a G.o.d demanding his own rites and worshippers? That it uses men for its own purposes, and not for Christ"s?
That almost it hates Christ? It is so beautiful, so lovely, so haughty, so jealous!
"For I, thy G.o.d, am a jealous G.o.d."..." He broke off. "I could love Christ better in that garden than in the Cathedral. Tear it down and build it up again!" He turned restlessly, almost savagely, to Ronder. "Can you be happy and comfortable and at ease, when you see what Christ might be to human beings and what He is? Who thinks of Him, who cares for Him, who loves His sweetness and charity and tenderness? Why is something always in the way, always, always, always? Love! Charity! Doesn"t such a place as this Cathedral breed hatred and malice and pride and jealousy? And isn"t its very beauty a contempt?...And now what right have you to help my appointment to Pybus?"
Ronder smiled.
"You are what we need here," he said. "You shall shake some of our comfort from us--make a new life here for us."
Wistons was suddenly almost timid. He spoke as though he were waking from some dream.
"Good-bye.... Good-bye. No, don"t come down. Thank you so much. Thank you.
Very kind of you. Good-bye."
But Ronder insisted on coming down. They shook hands at his door. The figure was lost in the evening sun.
Ronder stood there for a moment gazing at the bright gra.s.s, the little houses with their shining knockers, the purple shadow of the Cathedral.
Had he done right? Was Wistons the man? Might he not be more dangerous than...? No, no, too late now. The fight with Brandon must move to its appointed end. Poor Brandon! Poor dear Brandon!
He looked across at the house as on the evening of his arrival from that same step he had looked.
Poor Brandon! He would like to do something for him, some little kindly unexpected act!
He closed the door and softly padded upstairs, humming happily to himself that little chant.
Chapter II
Two in the House
A letter from Falk to Joan.
Dear Joan--Mother has been here. I could get nothing out of her. I had only one thing to say--that she must go back to father. That was the one thing that she a.s.serted, over and over again, that she never would. Joan, she was tragic. I felt that I had never seen her before, never known her.
She was thinking of nothing but Morris. She seemed to see him all the time that she was in the room with me. She is going abroad with Morris at the end of this week--to South America, I believe. Mother doesn"t seem now to care what happens, except that she will not go back to father.
She said an odd thing to me at the end--that she had had her time, her wonderful time, and that she could never be as unhappy or as lonely as she was, and that she would love him always (Morris, I suppose), and that he would love her.
The skunk that Morris is! And yet I don"t know. Haven"t I been a skunk too? And yet I don"t feel a skunk. If only father would be happy! Then things would be better than they"ve ever been. You don"t know how good Annie is, Joan. How fine and simple and true! Why are we all such mixtures? Why can"t you ever do what"s right for yourself without hurting other people? But I"m not going to wait much longer. If things aren"t better soon I"m coming down whether he"ll see me or no. We _must_ make him happy. We"re all that he has now. Once this Pybus thing is settled I"ll come down. Write to me. Tell me everything. You"re a brick, Joan, to take all this as you do. Why did we go all these years without knowing one another?--Your loving brother,
FALK.
A letter from Joan to Falk.
DEAREST FALK--I"m answering you by return because I"m so frightened. If I send you a telegram, come down at once. Mr. Morris"s sister-in-law is telling everybody that he only went up to London on business. But she"s not going to stay here, I think. But I can"t think much even of mother. I can think of no one but father. Oh, Falk, it"s been terrible these last three days, and I don"t know _what"s_ going to happen.
I"ll try and tell you how it"s been. It"s two months now since mother went away. That night it was dreadful. He walked up and down his room all night. Indeed he"s been doing that ever since she went. And yet I don"t think it"s of her that he"s thinking most. I"m not sure even that he"s thinking of her at all.
He"s concentrating everything now on the Pybus appointment. He talks to himself. (You can see by that how changed he is.) He is hurrying round to see people and asking them to the house, and he"s so odd with them, looking at them suddenly, suspiciously, as though he expected that they were laughing at him. There"s always something in the back of his mind-- not mother, I"m sure. Something happened to him that last day of the Jubilee. He"s always talking about some one who struck him, and he puts his hand up to feel his forehead, where there was a bruise. He told me that day that he had fallen down, but I"m sure now that he had a fight with somebody.
He"s always talking, too, about a "conspiracy" against him--not only Canon Ronder, but something more general. Poor dear, the worst of it all is, how bewildered he is. You know how direct he used to be, the way he went straight to his point and wasn"t afraid of anybody. Now he"s always hesitating. He hesitates before he goes out, before he goes upstairs, before he comes into my room. It"s just as though he was for ever expecting that there"s some one behind the door waiting for him with a hammer. It"s so strange how I"ve changed my feeling about him. I used to think him so strong that he could beat down anybody, and now I feel he wants looking after all the time. Perhaps he never was really strong at all, but it was all on the outside. All the same he"s very brave too. He knows all the town"s been talking about him, but I think he"d face a whole world of Polchesters if he could only beat Canon Ronder over the Pybus appointment. If Mr. Forsyth isn"t appointed to that I think he"ll go to pieces altogether. You see, a year ago there wouldn"t have been any question about it at all. Of course he would have had his way.
But what makes me so frightened, Falk, is of something happening in the house. Father is so suspicious that it makes me suspicious too. It doesn"t seem like the house it was at all, but as though there were some one hiding in it, and at night it is awful. I lie awake listening, and I can hear father walking up and down, his room"s next to mine, you know. And then if I listen hard enough, I can hear footsteps all over the house-- you know how you do in the middle of the night. And there"s always some one coming upstairs. This will sound silly to you up in London, but it doesn"t seem silly here, I a.s.sure you. All the servants feel it, and Gladys is going at the end of the month.
And oh, Falk! I"m so sorry for him! It does seem so strange that everything should have changed for him as it has. I feel his own bewilderment. A year ago he seemed so strong and safe and secure as though he would go on like that for ever, and hadn"t an enemy in the world. How could he have? He"s never meant harm to any one. Your going away I can understand, but mother, I feel as though I never could speak to her again.
To be so cruel to father and to write him such a letter! (Of course I didn"t see the letter, but the effect of it on father was terrible.)
He"s so lonely now. He scarcely realises me half the time, and you see he never did think very much about me before, so it"s very difficult for him to begin now. I"m so inexperienced. It"s hard enough running the house now, and having to get another servant instead of Gladys--and I daresay the others will go too now, but that"s nothing to waiting all the time for something to happen and watching father every minute. We _must_ make him happy again, Falk. You"re quite right. It"s the only thing that matters. Everything else is less important than that. If only this Pybus affair were over! Canon Ronder is so powerful now. I"m so afraid of him. I do hate him so! The Cathedral, and the town, everything seems to have changed since he came. A year ago they were like father, settled for ever.
And now every one"s talking about new people and being out-of-date, and changing the Cathedral music and everything! But none of that matters in comparison with father.
I"ve written a terribly long letter, but it"s done me ever so much good.
I"m sometimes so tempted to telegraph to you at once. I"m almost sure father would be glad to see you. You were always the one he loved most.
But perhaps we"d better wait a little: if things get worse in any way I"ll telegraph at once.
I"m so glad you"re well, and happy. You haven"t in your letters told me anything about the Jubilee in London. Was it very fine? Did you see the Queen? Did she look very happy? Were the crowds very big? Much love from your loving sister,
JOAN.
Joan, waiting in the shadowy drawing-room for Johnny St. Leath, wondered whether her father had come in or no.
It wouldn"t matter if he had, he wouldn"t come into the drawing-room. He would go directly into his study. She knew exactly what he would do. He would shut the door, then a minute later would open it, look into the hall and listen, then close it again very cautiously. He always now did that.
And in any case if he did come into the drawing-room and saw Johnny it wouldn"t matter. His mind was entirely centred on Pybus, and Johnny had nothing to do with Pybus. Johnny"s mother, yes. Had that stout white- haired c.o.c.katoo suddenly appeared, she would be clutched, absorbed, utilised to her last white feather. But she didn"t appear. She stayed up in her Castle, serene and supreme.
Joan was very nervous. She stood, a little grey shadow in the grey room, her hands twisting and untwisting. She was nervous because she was going to say good-bye to Johnny, perhaps for ever, and she wasn"t sure that she"d have the strength to do it.
Suddenly he was there with her in the room, big and clumsy and cheerful, quite unaware apparently that he was never, after this, to see Joan again.
He tried to kiss her but she prevented him. "No, you must sit over there,"
she said, "and we must never, at least not probably for years and years, kiss one another again."
He was aware, as she spoke, of quite a new, a different Joan; he had been conscious of this new Joan on many occasions during these last weeks. When he had first known her she had been a child and he had loved her for her childishness; now he must meet the woman and the child together, and instinctively he was himself more serious in his att.i.tude to her.
"We could talk much better, Joan dear," he said, "if we were close together."
"No," she said; "then I couldn"t talk at all. We mustn"t meet alone again after to-day, and we mustn"t write, and we mustn"t consider ourselves engaged."