On every side now it seemed that the Archdeacon was making some blunder.
Little unimportant blunders perhaps, but nevertheless c.u.mulative in their effect! The balance had shifted. The Powers of the Air, bored perhaps with the too-extended spectacle of an Archdeacon successful and triumphant, had made a sign....
Ronder, as he stood in the spring sunlight, glancing up and down the High Street, so full of colour and movement, had an impulse as though it were almost a duty to go and warn the Archdeacon. "Look out! Look out! There"s a storm coming!" Warn the Archdeacon! He smiled. He could imagine to himself the scene and the reception his advice would have. Nevertheless, how sad that undoubtedly you cannot make an omelette without first breaking the eggs! And this omelette positively must be made!
He had intended to do a little shopping, an occupation in which he delighted because of the personal victories to be won, but suddenly now, moved by what impulse he could not tell, he turned back towards the Cathedral. He crossed the Green, and almost before he knew it he had pushed back the heavy West door and was in the dark, dimly coloured shadow. The air was chill. The nave was scattered with lozenges of purple and green light. He moved up the side aisle, thinking that now he was here he would exchange a word or two with old Lawrence. No harm would be done by a little casual amiability in that direction.
Before he realised, he was close to the Black Bishop"s Tomb. The dark grim face seemed to-day to wear a triumphant smile beneath the black beard. A shaft of sunlight played upon the marble like a searchlight upon water; the gold of the ironwork and the green ring and the tracery on the scrolled borders jumped under the sunlight like living things.
Ronder, moved as always by beauty, smiled as though in answer to the dead Bishop.
"Why! you"re the most alive thing in this Cathedral," he thought to himself.
"Pretty good bit of work, isn"t it?" he heard at his elbow. He turned and saw Davray, the painter. The man had been pointed out to him in the street; he knew his reputation. He was inclined to be interested in the man, in any one who had a wider, broader view of life than the citizens of the town. Davray had not been drinking for several weeks; and always towards the end of one of his sober bouts he was gentle, melancholy, the true artist in him rising for one last view of the beauty that there was in the world before the inevitable submerging.
He had, on this occasion, been sober for a longer period than usual; he felt weak and faint, as though he had been without food, and his favourite vice, that had been approaching closer and closer to him during these last days, now leered at him, leaning towards him from the other side of the gilded scrolls of the tomb.
"Yes, it"s a very fine thing." He cleared his throat. "You"re Canon Ronder, are you not?"
"Yes, I am."
"My name"s Davray. You probably heard of me as a drunkard who hangs about the town doing no good. I"m quite sure you don"t want to speak to me or know me, but in here, where it"s so quiet and so beautiful, one may know people whom it wouldn"t be nice to know outside."
Ronder looked at him. The man"s face, worn now and pinched and sharp, must once have had its fineness.
"You do yourself an injustice, Mr. Davray," Ronder said. "I"m very glad indeed to know you."
"Well, of course, you parsons have got to know everybody, haven"t you? And the sinners especially. That"s your job. But I"m not a sinner to-day. I haven"t drunk anything for weeks, although don"t congratulate me, because I"m certainly not going to hold out much longer. There"s no hope of redeeming me, Canon Ronder, even if you have time for the job."
Ronder smiled.
"I"m not going to preach to you," he said, "you needn"t be afraid."
"Well, let"s forget all that. This Cathedral is the very place, if you clergymen had any sense of proportion, where you should be ashamed to preach. It laughs at you."
"At any rate the Bishop does," said Ronder, looking down at the tomb.
"No, but all of it," said Davray. Instinctively they both looked up. High above them, in the very heart of the great Cathedral tower, a mist, reflected above the windows until it was coloured a very faint rose, trembled like a sea about the black rafters and rounded pillars. Even as they looked some bird flew twittering from corner to corner.
"When I"m worked up," said Davray, "which I"m not to-day, I just long to clear all you officials out of it. I laugh sometimes to think how important you think yourselves and how unimportant you really are. The Cathedral laughs too, and once and again stretches out a great lazy finger and just flicks you away as it would a spider"s web. I hope you don"t think me impertinent."
"Not in the least," said Ronder; "some of us even may feel just as you do about it."
"Brandon doesn"t." Davray moved away. "I sometimes think that when I"m properly drunk one day I"ll murder that man. His self-sufficiency and conceit are an insult to the Cathedral. But the Cathedral knows. It bides its time."
Ronder looked gravely at the melancholy, ineffective figure with the pale pointed beard, and the weak hands. "You speak very confidently, Mr.
Davray," he said. "As with all of us, you judge others by yourself. When you know what the Cathedral"s att.i.tude to yourself is, you"ll be able to see more clearly."
"To myself!" Davray answered excitedly. "It has none! To myself? Why, I"m n.o.body, nothing. It doesn"t have to begin to consider me. I"m less than the dung the birds drop from the height of the tower. But I"m humble before it. I would let its meanest stone crush the life out of my body, and be glad enough. At least I know its power, its beauty. And I adore it!
I adore it!"
He looked up as he spoke; his eyes seemed to be eagerly searching for some expected face.
Ronder disliked both melodrama and sentimentality. Both were here.
"Take my advice," he said smiling. "Don"t think too much about the place...I"m glad that we met. Good afternoon."
Davray did not seem to have noticed him; he was staring down again at the Bishop"s Tomb. Ronder walked away. A strange man! A strange day! How different people were! Neither better nor worse, but just different. As many varieties as there were particles of sand on the seash.o.r.e.
How impossible to be bored with life. Nevertheless, entering his own home he was instantly bored. He found there, having tea with his aunt and sitting beneath the Hermes, so that the contrast made her doubly ridiculous, Julia Preston. Julia Preston was to him the most boring woman in Polchester. To herself she was the most important. She was a widow and lived in a little green house with a little green garden in the Polchester outskirts. She was as pretty as she had been twenty years before, exactly the same, save that what nature had, twenty years ago, done for the asking, it now did under compulsion. She believed the whole world in love with her and was therefore a thoroughly happy woman. She had a healthy interest in the affairs of her neighbours, however small they might be, and believed in "Truth, Beauty, and the Improvement of the Lower Cla.s.ses."
"Dear Canon Ronder, how nice this is!" she exclaimed. "You"ve been hard at work all the afternoon, I know, and want your tea. How splendid work is! I often think what would life be without it"."
Ronder, who took trouble with everybody, smiled, sat down near to her and looked as though he loved her.
"Well, to be quite honest, I haven"t been working very hard. Just seeing a few people."
"Just seeing a few people!" Mrs. Preston used a laugh that was a favourite of hers because she had once been told that it was like "a tinkling bell."
"Listen to him! As though that weren"t the hardest thing in the world.
Giving out! Giving out! What is so exhausting, and yet what so worth while in the end? Unselfishness! I really sometimes feel that is the true secret of life."
"Have one of those little cakes, Julia," said Miss Ronder drily. She, unlike her nephew, bothered about very few people indeed. "Make a good tea."
"I will, as you want me to, dear Alice," said Mrs. Preston. "Oh, thank you, Canon Ronder! How good of you; ah, there! I"ve dropped my little bag.
It"s under that table. Thank you a thousand times! And isn"t it strange about Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris?"
"Isn"t what strange?" asked Miss Ronder, regarding her guest with grim cynicism.
"Oh well--nothing really, except that every one"s asking what they can find in common. They"re always together. Last Monday Aggie Combermere met her coming out of the Rectory, then Ellen Stiles saw them in the Precincts last Sunday afternoon, and I saw them myself this morning in the High Street."
"My dear Mrs. Preston," said Ronder, "why _shouldn"t_ they go about together?"
"No reason at all," said Mrs. Preston, blushing very prettily, as she always did when she fancied that any one was attacking her. "I"m sure that I"m only too glad that poor Mrs. Brandon has found a friend. My motto in life is, "Let us all contribute to the happiness of one another to the best of our strength."
"Truly, that"s a thing we can _all_ do, isn"t it? Life isn"t too bright for some people, I can"t help thinking. And courage is the thing.
After all, it isn"t life that is important but simply how brave you are.
"At least that"s my poor little idea of it. But it does seem a little odd about Mrs. Brandon. She"s always kept so much to herself until now."
"You worry too much about others, dear Julia," said Miss Ronder.
"Yes, I really believe I do. Why, there"s my bag gone again! Oh, how good of you, Canon! It"s under that chair. Yes. I do. But one can"t help one"s nature, can one? I often tell myself that it"s really no credit to me being unselfish. I was simply born that way. Poor Jack used to say that he wished I _would_ think of myself more! I think we were meant to share one another"s burdens. I really do. And what Mrs. Brandon can see in Mr.
Morris is so odd, because _really_ he isn"t an interesting man."
"Let me get you some more tea," said Ronder.
"No, thank you. I really must be going. I"ve been here an unconscionable time. Oh! there"s my handkerchief. How silly of me! Thank you so much!"
She got up and prepared to depart, looking so pretty and so helpless that it was really astonishing that the Hermes did not appreciate her.