The Cathedral - Hugh Walpole

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       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      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

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