"Have you heard nothing?"

"No."

She laughed bitterly. "I thought all the town knew by this time."

"Knew what?"

"Falk has run away to London with the daughter of Samuel Hogg."

"Samuel Hogg?"

"Yes, the man of the 'Dog and Pilchard' down in Seatown."

"Run away with her?"

"Yesterday. He sent us a letter saying that he had gone up to London to earn his own living, had taken this girl with him, and would marry her next week."

Morris was horrified.

"Without a word of warning? Without speaking to you? Horrible! The daughter of that man.... I know something about him...the worst man in the place."

Then followed a long silence. The effect on Morris was as it had been on Mrs. Brandon—the actual deed was almost lost sight of in the sudden light that it threw on his passion. From the very first the most appealing element of her attraction to him had been her loneliness, the neglect from which she suffered, the need she had of comfort.

He saw her as a woman who, for twenty years, had had no love, although in her very nature she had hungered for it; and if she had not been treated with actual cruelty, at least she had been so basely neglected that cruelty was not far away. It was not true to say that during these months he had grown to hate Brandon, but he had come, more and more, to despise and condemn him. The effeminacy in his own nature had from the first both shrunk from and been attracted by the masculinity in Brandon.

He could have loved that man, but as the situation had forbidden that, his feeling now was very near to hate.

Then, as the weeks had gone by, Mrs. Brandon had made it clear enough to him that Falk was all that she had left to her—not very much to her even there, perhaps, but something to keep her starved heart from dying. And now Falk was gone, gone in the most brutal, callous way. She had no one in the world left to her but himself. The rush of tenderness and longing to be good to her that now overwhelmed him was so strong and so sudden that it was with the utmost difficulty that he had held himself from going to the sofa beside her.

She looked so weak there, so helpless, so gentle.

"Amy," he said, "I will do anything in the world that is in my power."

She was trembling, partly with genuine emotion, partly with cold, partly with the drama of the situation.

"No," she said, "I don't want to do a thing that's going to involve you. You must be left out of this. It is something that I must carry through by myself. It was wrong of me, I suppose, to come to you, but my first thought was that I must have companionship. I was selfish——"

"No," he broke in, "you were not selfish. I am prouder that you came to me than I can possibly say. That is what I'm here for. I'm your friend. You know, after all these months, that I am. And what is a friend for?" Then, as though he felt that he was advancing too dangerously close to emotion, he went on more quietly:

"Tell me—if it isn't impertinent of me to ask—what is your husband doing about it?"

"Doing? Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"No. I thought that he would go up to London and see Falk, but he doesn't feel that that is necessary. He says that, as Falk has run away with the girl, the most decent thing that he can do is to marry her. He seems very little upset by it. He is a most curious man. After all these years, I don't understand him at all."

Morris went on hesitatingly. "I feel guilty myself. Weeks ago I overheard gossip about your son and some girl. I wondered then whether I ought to say something to you. But it's so difficult in these cases to know what one ought to do. There's so much gossip in these little Cathedral towns. I thought about it a good deal. Finally, I decided that it wasn't my place to meddle."

"I heard nothing," she answered. "It's always the family that hears the talk last. Perhaps my husband's right. Perhaps there is nothing to be done. I see now that Falk never cared anything for any of us. I cheated myself. I had to cheat myself, otherwise I don't know what I'd have done. And now his doing this has made me suspicious of everything and of every one. Yes, even of a friendship like ours—the greatest thing in my life— now—the only thing in my life."

Her voice trembled and dropped. But still he would not let himself pass on to that other ground. "Is there nothing I can do?" he asked. "I suppose it would do no good if I were to go up to London and see him? I knew him a little—"

Vehemently she shook her head.

"You're not to be involved in this. At least I can do that much—keep you out of it."

"How is he going to live, then?"

"He talks about writing. He's utterly confident, of course. He always has been. Looking back now, I despise myself for ever imagining that I was of any use to him. I see now that he never needed me—never at all."

Suddenly she looked across at him sharply.

"How is your sister-in-law?" His colour rose.

"My sister-in-law?"

"Yes."

"She isn't well."

"What—?"

"It's hard to say. The doctor looked at her and said she needed quiet and must go to the sea. It's her nerves."

"Her nerves?"

"Yes, they got very queer. She's been sleeping badly."

"You quarrelled."

"She and I?—yes."

"What about?"

"Oh, I don't know. She's getting a little too much for me, I think."

She looked him in the face.

"No, you know it isn't that. You quarrelled about me."

He said nothing.

"You quarrelled about me," she repeated. "She always disliked me from the beginning."

"No."

"Oh, yes, she did. Of course I saw that. She was jealous of me. She saw, more quickly than any one else, how much—how much we were going to mean to one another. Speak the truth. You know that is the best."

"She didn't understand," Morris answered slowly. "She's stupid in some things."

"So I've been the cause of your quarrelling, of your losing the only friend you had in your life?"

"No, not of my losing it. I haven't lost her. Our relationship has shifted, that's all."

"No. No. I know it is so. I've taken away the only person near you."

And suddenly turning from him to the back of the sofa, hiding her face in her hands, she broke into passionate crying.

He stood for a moment, taut, controlled, as though he was fighting his last little desperate battle. Then he was beaten. He knelt down on the floor beside the sofa. He touched her hair, then her cheek. She made a little movement towards him. He put his arms around her.

"Don't cry. Don't cry. I can't bear that. You mustn't say that you've taken anything from me. It isn't true. You've given me everything... everything. Why should we struggle any longer? Why shouldn't we take what has been given to us? Your husband doesn't care. I haven't anybody. Has God given me so much that I should miss this? And has He put it in our hearts if He didn't mean us to take it? I love you. I've loved you since first I set eyes on you. I can't keep away from you any longer. It's keeping away from myself. We're one. We are one another—not alone, either of us—any more...."

She turned towards him. He drew her closer and closer to him. With a little sigh of happiness and comfort she yielded to him.

* * * * *

There was only one cloud in the dim green sky, a cloud orange and crimson, shaped like a ship. As the sun was setting, a little wind stirred, the faint aftermath of the storm of the day, and the cloud, now all crimson, passed over the town and died in fading ribbons of gold and orange in the white sky of the far horizon.

Only Miss Milton, perhaps, among all the citizens of the town, waiting patiently behind her open window, watched its career.



Chapter IX

The Quarrel



Every one has known, at one time or another in life, that strange unexpected calm that always falls like sudden snow on a storm-tossed country, after some great crisis or upheaval. The blow has seemed so catastrophic that the world must be changed with the force of its fall— but the world is not changed; hours pass and days go by, and no one seems to be aware that anything has occurred...it is only when months have gone, and perhaps years, that one looks back and sees that it was, after all, on such and such a day that life was altered, values shifted, the face of the world turned to a new angle.

This is platitudinous, but platitudes are not platitudes when we first make our personal experience of them. There seemed nothing platitudinous to Brandon in his present experiences. The day on which he had received Falk's letter had seemed to fling him neck and crop into a new world—a world dim and obscure and peopled with new and terrifying devils. The morning after, he was clear again, and it was almost as though nothing at all had occurred. He went about the town, and everybody behaved in a normal manner. No sign of those strange menacing figures, the drunken painter, the sinister, smiling Hogg; every one as usual.

Ryle complacent and obedient; Bentinck-Major officious but subservient; Mrs. Combermere jolly; even, as he fancied, Foster a little more amiable than usual. It was for this open, outside world that he had now for many years been living; it was not difficult to tell himself that things here were unchanged. Because he was no psychologist, he took people as he found them; when they smiled they were pleased and when they frowned they were angry.

Because there was a great deal of pressing business he pushed aside Falk's problem. It was there, it was waiting for him, but perhaps time would solve it.

He concentrated himself with a new energy, a new self-confidence, upon the Cathedral, the Jubilee, the public life of the town.

Nevertheless, that horrible day had had its effect upon him. Three days after Falk's escape he was having breakfast alone with Joan.

"Mother has a headache," Joan said. "She's not coming down."

He nodded, scarcely looking up from his paper.

In a little while she said: "What are you doing to-day, daddy? I'm very sorry to bother you, but I'm housekeeping to-day, and I have to arrange about meals——"

"I'm lunching at Carpledon," he said, putting his paper down.

"With the Bishop? How nice! I wish I were. He's an old dear."

"He wants to consult me about some of the Jubilee services," Brandon said in his public voice.

"Won't Canon Ryle mind that?"

"I don't care if he does. It's his own fault, for not managing things better."

"I think the Bishop must be very lonely out there. He hardly ever comes into Polchester now. It's because of his rheumatism, I suppose. Why doesn't he resign, daddy?"

"He's wanted to, a number of times. But he's very popular. People don't want him to go."

"I don't wonder." Joan's eyes sparkled. "Even if one never saw him at all it would be better than somebody else. He's such an old darling."

"Well, I don't believe myself in men going on when they're past their work. However, I hear he's going to insist on resigning at the end of this year."

"How old is he, daddy?"

"Eighty-seven."

There was always a tinge of patronage in the Archdeacon's voice when he spoke of his Bishop. He knew that he was a saint, a man whose life had been of so absolute a purity, a simplicity, an unfaltering faith and courage, that there were no flaws to be found in him anywhere. It was possibly this very simplicity that stirred Brandon's patronage. After all, we were living in a workaday world, and the Bishop's confidence in every man's word and trust in every man's honour had been at times a little ludicrous. Nevertheless, did any one dare to attack the Bishop, he was immediately his most ardent and ferocious defender.

It was only when the Bishop was praised that he felt that a word or two of caution was necessary.

However, he was just now not thinking of the Bishop; he was thinking of his daughter. As he looked across the table at her he wondered. What had Falk's betrayal of the family meant to her? Had she been fond of him? She had given no sign at all as to how it had affected her. She had her friends and her life in the town, and her family pride like the rest of them. How pretty she looked this morning! He was suddenly aware of the love and devotion that she had given him for years and the small return that he had made. Not that he had been a bad father—he hurriedly reassured himself; no one could accuse him of that. But he had been busy, preoccupied, had not noticed her as he might have done. She was a woman now, with a new independence and self-assurance! And yet such a child at the same time! He recalled the evening in the cab when she had held his hand. How few demands she ever made upon him; how little she was ever in the way!

He went back to his paper, but found that he could not fix his attention upon it. When he had finished his breakfast he went across to her. She looked up at him, smiling. He put his hand on her shoulder.

"Um—yes.... And what are you going to do to-day, dear?"

"I've heaps to do. There's the Jubilee work-party in the morning. Then there are one or two things in the town to get for mother." She paused.

He hesitated, then said:

"Has any one—have your friends in the town—said anything about Falk?"

She looked up at him.

"No, daddy—not a word."

Then she added, as though to herself, with a little sigh, "Poor Falk!"

He took his hand from her shoulder.

"So you're sorry for him, are you?" he said angrily.

"Not sorry, exactly," she answered slowly. "But—you will forgive him, won't you?"

"You can be sure," Brandon said, "that I shall do what is right."

She sprang up and faced him.

"Daddy, now that Falk is gone, it's more necessary than ever for you to realise me."

"Realise you?" he said, looking at her.

"Yes, that I'm a woman now and not a child any longer. You don't realise it a bit. I said it to mother months ago, and told her that now I could do all sorts of things for her. She has let me do a few things, but she hasn't changed to me, not been any different, or wanted me any more than she did before. But you must. You must, daddy. I can help you in lots of ways. I can——"

"What ways?" he asked her, smiling.

"I don't know. You must find them out. What I mean is that you've got to count on me as an element in the family now. You can't disregard me any more."

"Have I disregarded you?"

"Of course you have," she answered, laughing.

"Well, we'll see," he said. He bent down and kissed her, then left the room.

He left to catch the train to Carpledon in a self-satisfied mind. He was tired, certainly, and had felt ever since the shock of three days back a certain "warning" sensation that hovered over him rather like hot air, suggesting that sudden agonizing pain...but so long as the pain did not come...He had thought, half derisively, of seeing old Puddifoot, even of having himself overhauled—but Puddifoot was an ass. How could a man who talked the nonsense Puddifoot did in the Conservative Club be anything of a doctor? Besides, the man was old. There was a young man now, Newton. But Brandon distrusted young men.

He was amused and pleased at the station. He strode up and down the platform, his hands behind his broad back, his head up, his top-hat shining, his gaiters fitting superbly his splendid calves. The station- master touched his hat, smiled, and stayed for a word or two. Very deferential. Good fellow, Curtis. Knew his business. The little, stout, rosy-faced fellow who guarded the book-stall touched his hat. Brandon stopped and looked at the papers. Advertisements already of special Jubilee supplements—"Life of the Good Queen," "History of the Empire, 1837-1897." Piles of that trashy novel Joan had been talking about, The Massarenes, by Ouida. Pah! Stuff and nonsense. How did people have time for such things? "Yes, Mr. Waller. Fine day. Very fine May we're having. Ought to be fine for the Jubilee. Hope so, I'm sure. Disappoint many people if it's wet...."

He bought the Church Times and crossed to the side-line. No one here but a farmer, a country-woman and her little boy. The farmer's side- face reminded him suddenly of some one. Who was it? That fat cheek, the faint sandy hair beneath the shabby bowler. He was struck as though, standing on a tight-rope in mid-air, he felt it quiver beneath him. Hogg.... He turned abruptly and faced the empty line and the dusty neglected boarding of a railway-shed. He must not think of that man, must not allow him to seize his thoughts. Hogg—Davray. Had he dreamt that horrible scene in the Cathedral? Could that have been? He lifted his hand and, as it were, tore the scene into pieces and scattered it on the line. He had command of his thoughts, shutting down one little tight shutter after another upon the things he did not want to see. That he did not want to see, did not want to know.

The little train drew in, slowly, regretfully. Brandon got into the solitary first-class carriage and buried himself in his paper. Soon, thanks to his happy gift of attending only to one question at a time, the subjects that that paper brought up for discussion completely absorbed him. Anything more absurd than such an argument!—as though the validity of Baptism did not absolutely depend...

He was happily lost; the little train steamed out. He saw nothing of the beautiful country through which they passed—country, on this May morning, so beautiful in its rich luxuriant security, the fields bending and dipping to the tree-haunted streams, the hedges running in lines of blue and dark purple like ribbons to the sky, that, blue-flecked, caught in light and shadow a myriad pattern as a complement to its own sun-warmed clouds. Rich and English so utterly that it was almost scornful in its resentment of foreign interference. In spite of the clouds the air was now in its mid-day splendour, and the cows, in clusters of brown, dark and clay-red, sought the cool grey shadows of the hedges.

The peace of centuries lay upon this land, and the sun with loving hands caressed its warm flanks as though here, at least, was some one of whom it might be sure, some one known from old time.

The little station at Carpledon was merely a wooden shed. Woods running down the hill threatened to overwhelm it; at its very edge beyond the line, thick green fields slipped to the shining level waters of the Pol. Brandon walked up the hill through the wood, past the hedge and on through the Park to the Palace drive. The sight of that old, red, thick-set building with its square comfortable windows, its bell-tower, its dovecots, its graceful, stolid, happy lines, its high old doorway, its tiled roof rosy-red with age, respectability and comfort, its square solemn chimneys behind and between whose self-possession the broad branches of the oaks, older and wiser than the house itself, uplifted their clustered leaves with the protection of their conscious dignity— this house thrilled all that was deepest and most superstitious in his soul.

To this building he would bow, to this house surrender. Here was something that would command all his reverence, a worthy adjunct to the Cathedral that he loved; without undue pride he must acknowledge to himself that, had fate so willed it, he would himself have occupied this place with a worthy and fitting appropriateness. It seemed, indeed, as he pulled the iron bell and heard its clang deep within the house, that he understood what it needed so well that it must sigh with a dignified relief when it saw him approach.

Appleford the butler, who opened the door, was an old friend of his—an aged, white-locked man, but dignity itself.

"His lordship will be down in a moment," he said, showing him into the library. Some one else was there, his back to the door. He turned round; it was Ronder.

When Brandon saw him he had again that sense that came now to him so frequently, that some plot was in process against him and gradually, step by step, hedging him in. That is a dangerous sense for any human being to acquire, but most especially for a man of Brandon's simplicity, almost naivete of character.

Ronder! The very last man whom Brandon could bear to see in that place and at that time! Brandon's visit to-day was not entirely unengineered. To be honest, he had not spoken quite the truth to his daughter when he had said that the Bishop had asked him out there for consultation. Himself had written to the Bishop a very strong letter, emphasising the inadequacy with which his Jubilee services were being prepared, saying something about the suitability of Forsyth for the Pybus living, and hinting at certain carelessnesses in the Chapter "due to new and regrettable influences." It was in answer to this letter that Ponting, the Resident Chaplain, had written saying that the Bishop would like to give Brandon luncheon. It may be said, therefore, that Brandon wished to consult the Bishop rather than the Bishop Brandon. The Archdeacon had pictured to himself a cosy tete-a-tete with the Bishop lasting for an hour or two, and entirely uninterrupted. He flattered himself that he knew his dear Bishop well enough by this time to deal with him exactly as he ought to be dealt with. But, for that dealing, privacy was absolutely essential. Any third person would have been, to the last extent, provoking. Ronder was disastrous. He instantly persuaded himself, as he looked at that rubicund and smiling figure, that Ronder had heard of his visit and determined to be one of the party. He could only have heard of it through Ponting.... The Archdeacon's fingers twisted within one another as he considered how pleasant it would be to wring Ponting's long, white and ecclesiastical neck.

And, of course, behind all this immediate situation was his sense of the pleasure and satisfaction that Ronder must be feeling about Falk's scandal. Licking his thick red lips about it, he must be, watching with his little fat eyes for the moment when, with his round fat fingers, he might probe that wound.

Nevertheless the Archdeacon knew, by this time, Ronder's character and abilities too well not to realise that he must dissemble. Dissembling was the hardest thing of all that a man of the Archdeacon's character could be called upon to perform, but dissemble he must.

His smile was of a grim kind.

"Ha! Ronder; didn't expect to see you here."

"No," said Ronder, coming forward and smiling with the utmost geniality. "To tell you the truth, I didn't expect to find myself here. It was only last evening that I got a note from the Bishop asking me to come out to luncheon to-day. He said that you would be here."

Oh, so Ponting was not to blame. It was the Bishop himself. Poor old man! Cowardice obviously, afraid of some of the home-truths that Brandon might find it his duty to deliver. A coward in his old age....

"Very fine day," said Brandon.

"Beautiful," said Ronder. "Really, looks as though we are going to have good weather for the Jubilee."

"Hope we do," said Brandon. "Very hard on thousands of people if it's wet."

"Very," said Ronder. "I hope Mrs. Brandon is well."

"To-day she has a little headache," said Brandon. "But it's really nothing."

"Well," said Ronder. "I've been wondering whether there isn't some thunder in the air. I've been feeling it oppressive myself."

"It does get oppressive," said Brandon, "this time of the year in Glebeshire—especially South Glebeshire. I've often noticed it."

"What we want," said Ronder, "is a good thunderstorm to clear the air."

"Just what we're not likely to get," said Brandon. "It hangs on for days and days without breaking."

"I wonder why that is," said Ronder; "there are no hills round about to keep it. There's hardly a hill of any size in the whole of South Glebeshire."

"Of course, Polchester's in a hollow," said Brandon. "Except for the Cathedral, of course. I always envy Lady St. Leath her elevation."

"A fine site, the Castle," said Ronder. "They must get a continual breeze up there."

"They do," said Brandon. "Whenever I'm up there there's a wind."

This most edifying conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the Reverend Charles Ponting. Mr. Ponting was very long, very thin and very black, his cadaverous cheeks resembling in their colour nothing so much as good fountain-pen ink. He spoke always in a high, melancholy and chanting voice. He was undoubtedly effeminate in his movements, and he had an air of superior secrecy about the affairs of the Bishop that people sometimes found very trying. But he was a good man and a zealous, and entirely devoted to his lord and master.

"Ha! Archdeacon.... Ha! Canon. His lordship will be down in one moment. He has asked me to make his apologies for not being here to receive you. He is just finishing something of rather especial importance."

The Bishop, however, entered a moment later. He was a little, frail man, walking with the aid of a stick. He had snow-white hair, rather thick and long, pale cheeks and eyes of a bright china-blue. He had that quality, given to only a few in this world of happy mediocrities, of filling, at once, any room into which he entered with the strength and fragrance of his spirit. So strong, fearless and beautiful was his soul that it shone through the frail compass of his body with an unfaltering light. No one had ever doubted the goodness and splendour of the man's character. Men might call his body old and feeble and past the work that it was still called upon to perform. They might speak of him as guileless, as too innocent of this world's slippery ways, as trusting where no child of six years of age would have trusted; these things might have been, and were, said, but no man, woman, nor child, looking upon him, hesitated to realise that here was some one who had walked and talked with God and in whom there was no shadow of deceit nor evil thought. Old Glasgow Parmiter, the lawyer, the wickedest old man Polchester had ever known, said once of him, "If there's a hell, I suppose I'm going to it, and I'm sure I don't care. There may be one and there may not. I know there's a heaven. Purcell lives there."

His voice, which was soft and strong, had at its heart a tiny stammer which came out now and then with a hesitating, almost childish, charm. As he stood there, leaning on his stick, smiling at them, there did seem a great deal of the child about him, and Brandon, Ponting and Ronder suddenly seemed old, wicked and soiled in the world's ways.

"Please forgive me," he said, "for not being down when you came. I move slowly now.... Luncheon is ready, I know. Shall we go in?"

The four men crossed the stone-flagged hall into the diningroom where Appleford stood, devoutly, as one about to perform a solemn rite. The dining-room was high-ceilinged with a fireplace of old red brick fronted with black oak beams. The walls were plain whitewash, and they carried only one picture, a large copy of Duerer's "Knight and the Devil." The high, broad windows looked out on to the sloping lawn whose green now danced and sparkled under the sun. The trees that closed it in were purple shadowed.

They sat, clustered together, at the end of a long oak refectory table. The Bishop himself was a teetotaler, but there was good claret and, at the end, excellent port. The only piece of colour on the table was a bowl of dark-blue glass piled with fruit. The only ornament in the room was a beautifully carved silver crucifix on the black oak mantelpiece. The sun danced across the stained floor with every pattern and form of light.

Brandon could not remember a more unpleasant meal in that room; he could not, indeed, remember ever having had an unpleasant meal there before. The Bishop talked, as he always did, in a most pleasant and easy fashion. He talked about the nectarines and plums that were soon to glorify his garden walls, about the pears and apples in his orchard, about the jokes that old Puddifoot made when he came over and examined his rheumatic limbs. He gently chaffed Ponting about his punctuality, neatness and general dislike of violent noises, and he bade Appleford to tell the housekeeper, Mrs. Brenton, how especially good to-day was the fish souffle. All this was all it had ever been; nothing could have been easier and more happy. But on other days it had always been Brandon who had thrown back the ball for the Bishop to catch. Whoever the other guest might be, it was always Brandon who took the lead, and although he might be a little ponderous and slow in movement, he supplied the Bishop's conversational needs quite adequately.

And to-day it was Ronder; from the first, without any ostentation or presumption, with the utmost naturalness, he led the field. To understand the full truth of this occasion it must be known that Mr. Ponting had, for a considerable number of years past, cherished a deep but private detestation of the Archdeacon. It was hard to say wherein that hatred had had it inception—probably in some old, long-forgotten piece of cheerful patronage on Brandon's part; Mr. Ponting was of those who consider and dwell and dwell again, and he had, by this time, dwelt upon the Archdeacon so long and so thoroughly that he knew and resented the colour of every one of the Archdeacon's waistcoat buttons. He was, perhaps, quick to perceive to-day that a mightier than the Archdeacon was here; or it may have been that he was well aware of what had been happening in Polchester during the last weeks, and was even informed of the incidents of the last three days.

However that may be, he did from the first pay an almost exaggerated deference to Ronder's opinion, drew him into the conversation at every possible opportunity, with such, interjections as "How true! How very true! Don't you think so, Canon Ronder?" or "What has been your experience in such a case, Canon Ronder?" or "I think, my lord, that Canon Ronder told me that he knows that place well," and disregarding entirely any remarks that Brandon might happen to make.

No one could have responded more brilliantly to this opportunity than did Ronder; indeed the Bishop, who was his host at the Palace to-day for the first time, said after his departure, "That's a most able man, most able. Lucky indeed for the diocese that it has secured him...a delightful fellow."

No one in the world could have been richer in anecdotes than Ronder, anecdotes of precisely the kind for the Bishop's taste, not too worldly, not too clerical, amusing without being broad, light and airy, but showing often a fine scholarship and a wise and thoughtful experience of foreign countries. The Bishop had not laughed so heartily for many a day. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" he cried at the anecdote of the two American ladies in Siena. "That's good, indeed...that's very good. Did you get that, Pouting? Dear me, that's perfectly delightful!" A little tear of shining pleasure trickled down his cheek. "Really, Canon, I've never heard anything better."

Brandon thought Ronder's manners outrageous. Poor Bishop! He was indeed failing that he could laugh so heartily at such pitiful humour. He tried, to show his sense of it all by grimly pursuing his food and refusing even the ghost of a chuckle, but no one was perceiving him, as he very bitterly saw. The Bishop, it may be, saw it too, for at last he turned to Brandon and said:

"But come, Archdeacon. I was forgetting. You wrote to me s-something about that Jubilee-music in the Cathedral. You find that Ryle is making rather a m-mess of things, don't you?"

Brandon was deeply offended. Of what was the Bishop thinking that he could so idly drag forward the substance of an entirely private letter, without asking permission, into the public air? Moreover, the last thing that he wanted was that Ronder should know that he had been working behind Ryle's back. Not that he was in the least ashamed of what he had done, but here was precisely the thing that Ronder would like to use and make something of. In any case, it was the principle of the thing. Was Ronder henceforth to be privy to everything that passed between himself and the Bishop?

He never found it easy to veil his feelings, and he looked now, as Ponting delightedly perceived, like an overgrown, sulky schoolboy.

"No, no, my lord," he said, looking across at Ponting, as though he would love to set his heel upon that pale but eager visage. "You have me wrong there. I was making no complaint. The Precentor knows his own business best."

"You certainly said something in your letter," said the Bishop vaguely. "There was s-something, Ponting, was there not?"

"Yes, my lord," said Ponting. "There was. But I expect the Archdeacon did not mean it very seriously."

"Do you mean that you find the Precentor inefficient?" said the Bishop, looking at the coffee with longing and then shaking his head. "Not to-day, Appleford, alas—not to-day."

"Oh, no," said Brandon, colouring. "Of course not. Our tastes differ a little as to the choice of music, that's all. I've no doubt that I am old- fashioned."

"How do you find the Cathedral music, Canon?" he asked, turning to Ronder.

"Oh, I know very little about it," said Ronder, smiling. '"Nothing in comparison with the Archdeacon. I'm sure he's right in liking the old music that people have grown used to and are fond of. At the same time, I must confess that I haven't thought Ryle too venturesome. But then I'm very ignorant, having been here so short a time."

"That's right, then," said the Bishop comfortably. "There doesn't seem much wrong."

At that moment Appleford, who had been absent from the room for a minute, returned with a note which he gave to the Bishop.

"From Pybus, my lord," he said; "some one has ridden over with it."

At the word "Pybus" there was an electric silence in the room. The Bishop tore open the letter and read it. He half started from his chair with a little exclamation of distress and grief.

"Please excuse me," he said, turning to them. "I must leave you for a moment and speak to the bearer of this note. Poor Morrison...at last... he's gone!—Pybus!..."

The Archdeacon, in spite of himself, half rose and stared across at Ronder. Pybus! The living at last was vacant.

A moment later he felt deeply ashamed. In that sunlit room the bright green of the outside world quivering in pools of colour upon the pure space of the white walls spoke of life and beauty and the immortality of beauty.

It was hard to think of death there in such a place, but one must think of it and consider, too, Morrison, who had been so good a fellow and loved the world, and all the things in it, and had thought of heaven also in the spare moments that his energy left him.

A great sportsman he had been, with a famous breed of bull-terrier, and anxious to revive the South Glebeshire Hunt; very fine, too, in that last terrible year when the worst of all mortal diseases had leapt upon his throat and shaken him with agony and the imminent prospect of death— shaken him but never terrified him. Brandon summoned before him that broad, jolly, laughing figure, summoned it, bowed to its fortitude and optimism, then, as all men must, at such a moment, considered his own end; then, having paid his due to Morrison, returned to the great business of the—Living.

They were gathered together in the hall now. The Bishop had known Morrison well and greatly liked him, and he could think of nothing but the man himself. The question of the succession could not come near him that day, and as he stood, a little white-haired figure, tottering on his stick in the flagged hall, he seemed already to be far from the others, to be caught already half-way along the road that Morrison was now travelling.

Both Brandon and Ronder felt that it was right for them to go, although on a normal day they would have stayed walking in the garden and talking for another three-quarters of an hour until it was time to catch the three- thirty train from Carpledon. Mr. Ponting settled the situation.

"His lordship," he said, "hopes that you will let Bassett drive you into Polchester. There is the little wagonette; Bassett must go, in any case, to get some things. It is no trouble, no trouble at all."

They, of course, agreed, although for Brandon at any rate there would be many things in the world pleasanter than sitting with Ronder in a small wagonette for more than an hour. He also had no liking for Bassett, the Bishop's coachman for the last twenty years, a native of South Glebeshire, with all the obstinacy, pride and independence that that definition includes.

There was, however, no other course, and, a quarter of an hour later, the two clergymen found themselves opposite one another in a wagonette that was indeed so small that it seemed inevitable that Ronder's knees must meet Brandon's and Brandon's ankles glide against Ronder's.

The Archdeacon's temper was, by this time, at its worst. Everything had been ruined by Ronder's presence. The original grievances were bad enough —the way in which his letter had been flouted, the fashion in which his conversation had been disregarded at luncheon, the sanctified pleasure that Ponting's angular countenance had expressed at every check that he had received; but all these things mattered nothing compared with the fact that Ronder was present at the news of Morrison's death.

Had he been alone with the Bishop then, what an opportunity he would have had! How exactly he would have known how to comfort the Bishop, how tactful and right he would have been in the words that he used, and what an opportunity finally for turning the Bishop's mind in the way it should go, namely, towards Rex Forsyth!

As his knees, place them where he would, bumped against Ronder's, wrath bubbled in his heart like boiling water in a kettle. The very immobility of Bassett's broad back added to the irritation.

"It's remarkably small for a wagonette," said Ronder at last, when some minutes had passed in silence. "Further north this would not, I should think, be called a wagonette at all, but in Glebeshire there are special names for everything. And then, of course, we are both big men."

This comparison was most unfortunate. Ronder's body was soft and plump, most unmistakably fat. Brandon's was apparently in magnificent condition. It is well known that a large man in good athletic condition has a deep, overwhelming contempt for men who are fat and soft. Brandon made no reply. Ronder was determined to be pleasant.

"Very difficult to keep thin in this part of the world, isn't it? Every morning when I look at myself in the glass I find myself fatter than I was the day before. Then I say to myself, 'I'll give up bread and potatoes and drink hot water.' Hot water! Loathsome stuff. Moreover, have you noticed, Archdeacon, that a man who diets himself is a perfect nuisance to all his friends and neighbours? The moment he refuses potatoes his hostess says to him, 'Why, Mr. Smith, not one of our potatoes! Out of our own garden!' And then he explains to her that he is dieting, whereupon every one at the table hurriedly recites long and dreary histories of how they have dieted at one time or another with this or that success. The meal is ruined for yourself and every one else. Now, isn't it so? What do you do for yourself when you are putting on flesh?"

"I am not aware," said Brandon in his most haughty manner, "that I am putting on flesh."

"Of course I don't mean just now," answered Ronder, smiling. "In any case, the jolting of this wagonette is certain to reduce one. Anyway, I agree with you. It's a tiresome subject. There's no escaping fate. We stout men are doomed, I fancy."

There was a long silence. After Brandon had moved his legs about in every possible direction and found it impossible to escape Ronder's knees, he said:

"Excuse my knocking into you so often, Canon."

"Oh, that's all right," said Ronder, laughing. "This drive comes worse on you than myself, I fancy. You're bonier.... What a splendid figure the Bishop is! A great man—really, a great man. There's something about a man of that simplicity and purity of character that we lesser men lack. Something out of our grasp altogether."

"You haven't known him very long, I think," said Brandon, who considered himself in no way a lesser man than the Bishop.

"No, I have not," said Ronder, pleasantly amused at the incredible ease with which he was able to make the Archdeacon rise. "I've never been to Carpledon before to-day. I especially appreciated his inviting me when he was having so old a friend as yourself."

Another silence. Ronder looked about him; the afternoon was hot, and little beads of perspiration formed on his forehead. One trickled down his forehead, another into his eye. The road, early in the year though it was, was already dusty, and the high Glebeshire hedges hid the view. The irritation of the heat, the dust and the sense that they were enclosed and would for the rest of their lives jog along, thus, knee to knee, down an eternal road, made Ronder uncomfortable; when he was uncomfortable he was dangerous. He looked at the fixed obstinacy of the Archdeacon's face and said:

"Poor Morrison! So he's gone. I never knew him, but he must have been a fine fellow. And the Pybus living is vacant."

Brandon said nothing.

"An important decision that will be—I beg your pardon. That's my knee again.

"It's to be hoped that they will find a good man."

"There can be only one possible choice," said Brandon, planting his hands flat on his knees.

"Really!" said Ronder, looking at the Archdeacon with an air of innocent interest. "Do tell me, if it isn't a secret, who that is."

"It's no secret," said Brandon in a voice of level defiance. "Rex Forsyth is the obvious man."

"Really!" said Ronder. "That is interesting. I haven't heard him mentioned. I'm afraid I know very little about him."

"Know very little about him!" said Brandon indignantly. "Why, his name has been in every one's mouth for months!"

"Indeed!" said Ronder mildly. "But then I am, in many ways, sadly out of things. Do tell me about him."

"It's not for me to tell you," said Brandon, looking at Ronder with great severity. "You can find out anything you like from the smallest boy in the town." This was not polite, but Ronder did not mind. There was a little pause, then he said very amiably:

"I have heard some mention of that man Wistons."

"What!" cried Brandon in a voice not very far from a shout. "The fellow who wrote that abnominable book, The Four Creeds?"

"I suppose it's the same," said Ronder gently, rubbing his knee a little.

"That man!" The Archdeacon bounced in his seat. "That atheist! The leading enemy of the Church, the man above any who would destroy every institution that the Church possesses!"

"Come, come! Is it as bad as that?"

"As bad as that? Worse! Much worse! I take it that you have not read any of his books."

"Well, I have read one or two!"

"You have read them and you can mention his name with patience?"

"There are several ways of looking at these things——"

"Several ways of looking at atheism? Thank you, Canon. Thank you very much indeed. I am delighted to have your opinion given so frankly."

("What an ass the man is!" thought Ronder. "He's going to lose his temper here in the middle of the road with that coachman listening to every word.")

"You must not take me too literally, Archdeacon," said Ronder. "What I meant was that the question whether Wistons is an atheist can be argued from many points of view."

"It can not! It can not!" cried Brandon, now shaking with anger. "There can be no two points of view. 'He that is not with me is against me'——"

"Very well, then," said Ronder. "It can not. There is no more to be said."

"There is more to be said. There is indeed. I am glad, Canon, that at last you have come out into the open. I have been wondering for a long time past when that happy event was to take place. Ever since you came into this town, you have been subverting doctrine, upsetting institutions, destroying the good work that the Cathedral has been doing for many years past. I feel it my duty to tell you this, a duty that no one else is courageous enough to perform——"

"Really, is this quite the place?" said Ronder, motioning with his hand towards Bassett's broad back, and the massive sterns of the two horses that rose and fell, like tubs on a rocking sea.

But Brandon was past caution, past wisdom, past discipline. He could see nothing now but Render's two rosy cheeks and the round gleaming spectacles that seemed to catch his words disdainfully and suspend them there in indifference. "Excuse me. It is time indeed. It is long past the time. If you think that you can come here, a complete stranger, and do what you like with the institutions here, you are mistaken, and thoroughly mistaken. There are those here who have the interests of the place at heart and guard and protect them. Your conceit has blinded you, allow me to tell you, and it's time that you had a more modest estimate of yourself and doings."

"This really isn't the place," murmured Ronder, struggling to avoid Brandon's knees.

"Yes, atheism is nothing to you!" shouted the Archdeacon. "Nothing at all! You had better be careful! I warn you!"

"You had better be careful," said Ronder, smiling in spite of himself, "or you will be out of the carriage."

That smile was the final insult. Brandon, jumped up, rocking on his feet. "Very well, then. You may laugh as you please. You may think it all a very good joke. I tell you it is not. We are enemies, enemies from this moment. You have never been anything but my enemy."

"Do take care, Archdeacon, or you really will be out of the carriage."

"Very well. I will get out of it. I refuse to drive with you another step. I refuse. I refuse."

"But you can't walk. It's six miles."

"I will walk! I will walk! Stop and let me get out! Stop, I say!"

But Bassett who, according to his back, was as innocent of any dispute as the small birds on the neighbouring tree, drove on.

"Stop, I say. Can't you hear?" The Archdeacon plunged forward and pulled Bassett by the collar. "Stop! Stop!" The wagonette abruptly stopped.

Bassett's amazed face, two wide eyes in a creased and crumpled surface, peered round.

"It's war, I tell you. War!" Brandon climbed out.

"But listen, Archdeacon! You can't!"

"Drive on! Drive on!" cried Brandon, standing in the road and shaking his umbrella.

The wagonette drove on. It disappeared over the ledge of the hill.

There was a sudden silence. Brandon's anger pounded up into his head in great waves of constricting passion. These gradually faded. His knees were trembling beneath him. There were new sounds—birds singing, a tiny breeze rustling the hedges. No living soul in sight. He had suddenly a strange impulse to shed tears. What had he been saying? What had he been doing? He did not know what he had said. Another of his tempers....

The pain attacked his head—like a sword, like a sword.

He found a stone and sat down upon it. The pain invaded him like an active personal enemy. Down the road it seemed to him figures were moving—Hogg, Davray—that other world—the dust rose in little clouds.

What had he been doing? His head! Where did this pain come from?

He felt old and sick and weak. He wanted to be at home. Slowly he began to climb the hill. An enemy, silent and triumphant, seemed to step behind him.



Book III

Jubilee



Chapter I

June 17, Thursday: Anticipation



It must certainly be difficult for chroniclers of contemporary history to determine significant dates to define the beginning and end of succeeding periods. But I fancy that any fellow-citizen of mine, if he thinks for a moment, will agree with me that that Jubilee Summer of 1897 was the last manifestation in our town of the separate individual Polchester spirit, of the old spirit that had dwelt in its streets and informed its walls and roofs for hundreds of years past, something as separate and distinct as the smells of Seatown, the chime of the Cathedral bells, the cawing of the Cathedral rooks in the Precinct Elms.

An interesting and, to one reader at least, a pathetic history might be written of the decline and death of that same spirit—not in Polchester alone, but in many another small English town. From the Boer War of 1899 to the Great War of 1914 stretches that destructive period; the agents of that destruction, the new moneyed classes, the telephone, the telegram, the motor, and last of all, the cinema.

Destruction? That is, perhaps, too strong a word. We know that that is simply the stepping from one stage to another of the eternal, the immortal cycle. The little hamlet embowered in its protecting trees, defended by its beloved hills, the Rock rising gaunt and naked in its midst; then the Cathedral, the Monks, the Baron's Castle, the feudal rule; then the mighty Bishops and the vast all-encircling power of the Church; then the new merchant age, the Elizabethan salt of adventure; then the cosy seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with their domesticities, their little cultures, their comfortable religion, their stay-at-home unimaginative festivities.

Throughout the nineteenth century that spirit lingers, gently repulsing the outside world, reproving new doctrine, repressing new movement...and the Rock and the Cathedral wait their hours, watching the great sea that, far on the horizon, is bathing its dykes and flooding the distant fields, knowing that the waves are rising higher and higher, and will at last, with full volume, leap upon these little pastures, these green-clad valleys, these tiny hills. And in that day only the Cathedral and the Rock will stand out above the flood.

And this was a Polchester Jubilee. There may have been some consciousness of that little old woman driving in her carriage through the London streets, but in the main the Town suddenly took possession, cried aloud that these festivities were for Herself, that for a week at least the Town would assert Herself, bringing into Her celebration the Cathedral that was her chief glory, but of whom, nevertheless, she was afraid; the Rock upon which she was built, that never changed, the country that surrounded and supported her, the wild men who had belonged to her from time immemorial, the River that encircled her.

That week seemed to many, on looking back, a strangely mad time, days informed with a wildness for which there was no discernible reason—men and women and children were seized that week with some licence that they loved while it lasted, but that they looked back upon with fear when it was over. What had come over them? Who had been grinning at them?

The strange things that occurred that week seemed to have no individual agent. No one was responsible. But life, after that week, was for many people in the town never quite the same again.

On the afternoon of Thursday, June 17, Ronder stood at the window of his study and looked down upon the little orchard, the blazing flowers, the red garden-wall, and the tree-tops on the descending hill, all glazed and sparkling under the hot afternoon sun. As he looked down, seeing nothing, sunk deeply in his own thoughts, he was aware of extreme moral and spiritual discomfort. He moved back from the window, making with his fingers a little gesture of discontent and irritation. He paced his room, stopping absent-mindedly once and again to push in a book that protruded from the shelves, staying to finger things on his writing-table, jolting against a chair with his foot as he moved. At last he flung himself into his deep leather chair and stared fixedly at an old faded silk fire-guard, with its shadowy flowers and dim purple silk, seeing it not at all.

He was angry, and of all things in the world that he hated, he hated most to be that. He had been angry now for several weeks, and, as though it had been a heavy cold that had descended upon him, he woke up every morning expecting to find that his anger had departed—but it had not departed; it showed no signs whatever of departing.

As he sat there he was not thinking of the Jubilee, the one thought at that time of every living soul in Polchester, man, woman and child—he was thinking of no one but Brandon, with whom, to his own deep disgust, he was at last implacably, remorselessly, angry. How many years ago now he had decided that anger and hatred were emotions that every wise man, at all cost to his pride, his impatience, his self-confidence, avoided. Everything could be better achieved without these weaknesses, and for many years he had tutored and trained himself until, at last, he had reached this fine height of superiority. From that height he had suddenly fallen.

It was now three weeks since that luncheon at Carpledon, and in one way or another the quarrel on the road home—the absurd and ludicrous quarrel— had become known to the whole town. Had Brandon revealed it? Or possibly the coachman? Whoever it was, every one now knew and laughed. Laughed! It was that for which Ronder would never forgive Brandon. The man with his childish temper and monstrous conceit had made him into a ludicrous figure. It was true that they were laughing, it seemed, more at Brandon than at himself, but the whole scene was farcical. But beyond this, that incident, trivial though it might be in itself, had thrown the relationship of the two men into dazzling prominence. It was as though they had been publicly announced as antagonists, and now, stripped and prepared, ringed in by the breathless Town, must vulgarly afford the roughs of the place the fistic exhibition of their lives. It was the publicity that Ronder detested. He had not disliked Brandon—he had merely despised him, and he had taken an infinite pleasure in furthering schemes and ambitions, a little underground maybe, but all for the final benefit of the Town.

And now the blundering fool had brought this blaze down upon them, was indeed rushing round and screaming at his antagonist, shouting to any one who would hear that Ronder was a blackguard and a public menace. It had been whispered—from what source again Ronder did not know—that it was through Ronder's influence that young Falk Brandon had run off to Town with Hogg's daughter. The boy thought the world of Ronder, it was said, and had been to see him and ask his advice. Ronder knew that Brandon had heard this story and was publicly declaring that Ronder had ruined his son.

Finally the two men were brought into sharp rivalry over the Pybus living. Over that, too, the town, or at any rate the Cathedral section of it, was in two camps. Here, too, Brandon's vociferous publicity had made privacy impossible.

Ronder was ashamed, as though his rotund body had been suddenly exposed in all its obese nakedness before the assembled citizens of Polchester. In this public quarrel he was not in his element; forces were rising in him that he distrusted and feared.

People were laughing...for that he would never forgive Brandon so long as he lived.

On this particular afternoon he was about to close the window and try to work at his sermon when some one knocked at his door.

"Come in," he said impatiently. The maid appeared.

"Please, sir, there's some one would like to speak to you."

"Who is it?"

"She gave her name as Miss Milton, sir."

He paused, looking down at his papers. "She said she wouldn't keep you more than a moment, sir."

"Very well. I'll see her."

Fate pushing him again. Why should this woman come to him? How could any one say that any of the steps that he had taken in this affair had been his fault? Why, he had had nothing whatever to do with them!

The sight of Miss Milton in his doorway filled him with the same vague disgust that he had known on the earlier occasions at the Library. To-day she was wearing a white cotton dress, rather faded and crumpled, and grey silk gloves; in one of the fingers there was a hole. She carried a pink parasol, and wore a large straw hat overtrimmed with roses. Her face with its little red-rimmed eyes, freckled and flushed complexion, her clumsy thick-set figure, fitted ill with her youthful dress.

It was obvious enough that fate had not treated her well since her departure from the Library; she was running to seed very swiftly, and was herself bitterly conscious of the fact.

Ronder, looking at her, was aware that it was her own fault that it was so. She was incompetent, utterly incompetent. He had, as he had promised, given her some work to do during these last weeks, come copying, some arranging of letters, and she had mismanaged it all. She was a muddle- headed, ill-educated, careless, conceited and self-opinionated woman, and it did not make it any the pleasanter for Ronder to be aware, as he now was, that Brandon had been quite right to dismiss her from her Library post which she had retained far too long.

She looked across the room at him with an expression of mingled obstinacy and false humility. Her eyes were nearly closed.

"Good-afternoon, Canon Ronder," she said. "It is very good of you to see me. I shall not detain you very long."

"Well, what is it, Miss Milton?" he said, looking over his shoulder at her. "I am very busy, as a matter of fact. All these Jubilee affairs— however, if I can help you."

"You can help me, sir. It is a most serious matter, and I need your advice."

"Well, sit down there and tell me about it."

The sun was beating into the room. He went across and pulled down the blind, partly because it was hot and partly because Miss Milton was less unpleasant in shadow.

Miss Milton seemed to find it hard to begin. She gulped in her throat and rubbed her silk gloves nervously against one another.

"I daresay I've done wrong in this matter," she began—"many would think so. But I haven't come here to excuse myself. If I've done wrong, there are others who have done more wrong—yes, indeed."

"Please come to the point," said Ronder impatiently.

"I will, sir. That is my desire. Well, you must know, sir, that after my most unjust dismissal from the Library I took a couple of rooms with Mrs. Bassett who lets rooms, as perhaps you know, sir, just opposite St. James' Rectory, Mr. Morris's."

"Well?" said Ronder.

"Well, sir, I had not been there very long before Mrs. Bassett herself, who is the least interfering and muddling of women, drew my attention to a curious fact, a most curious fact."

Miss Milton paused, looking down at her lap and at a little shabby black bag that lay upon it.

"Well?" said Ronder again.

"This fact was that Mrs. Brandon, the wife of Archdeacon Brandon, was in the habit of coming every day to see Mr. Morris!"

Ronder got up from his chair.

"Now, Miss Milton," he said, "let me make myself perfectly clear. If you have come here to give me a lot of scandal about some person, or persons, in this town, I do not wish to hear it. You have come to the wrong place. I wonder, indeed, that you should care to acknowledge to any one that you have been spying at your window on the movements of some people here. That is a disgraceful action. I do not think there is any need for this conversation to continue."

"Excuse me, Canon Ronder, there is need." Miss Milton showed no intention whatever of moving from her chair. "I was aware that you would, in all probability, rebuke me for what I have done. I expected that. At the same time I may say that I was not spying in any sense of the word. I could not help it if the windows of my sitting-room looked down upon Mr. Morris's house. You could not expect me, in this summer weather, not to sit at my window.

"At the same time, if these visits of Mrs. Brandon's were all that had occurred I should certainly not have come and taken up your valuable time with an account of them; I hope that I know what is due to a gentleman of your position better than that. It is on a matter of real importance that I have come to you to ask your advice. Some one's advice I must have, and if you feel that you cannot give it me, I must go elsewhere. I cannot but feel that it is better for every one concerned that you should have this piece of information rather than any one else."

He noticed how she had grown in firmness and resolve since she had begun to speak. She now saw her way to the carrying out of her plan. There was a definite threat in the words of her last sentence, and as she looked at him across the shadowy light he felt as though he saw down into her mean little soul, filled now with hatred and obstinacy and jealous determination.

"Of course," he said severely, "I cannot refuse your confidence if you are determined to give it me."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head. "You have always been very kind to me, Canon Ronder, as you have been to many others in this place. Thank you." She looked at him almost as severely as he had looked at her. "I will be as brief as possible. I will not hide from you that I have never forgiven Archdeacon Brandon for his cruel treatment of me. That, I think, is natural. When your livelihood is taken away from you for no reason at all, you are not likely to forget it—if you are human. And I do not pretend to be more nor less than human. I will not deny that I saw these visits of Mrs. Brandon's with considerable curiosity. There was something hurried and secret in Mrs. Brandon's manner that seemed to me odd. I became then, quite by chance, the friend of Mr. Morris's cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Baker, a very nice woman. That, I think, was quite natural as we were neighbours, so to speak, and Mrs. Baker was herself a friend of Mrs. Bassett's.

"I asked no indiscreet questions, but at last Mrs. Baker confessed to both Mrs. Bassett and myself that she did not like what was going on in Mr. Morris's house, and that she thought of giving notice. When we asked her what she meant she said that Mrs. Brandon was the trouble, that she was always coming to the house, and that she and the reverend gentleman were shut up for hours together by themselves. She told us, too, that Mr. Morris's sister-in-law, Miss Burnett, had also made objections. We advised Mrs. Baker that it was her duty to stay, at any rate for the present."

Miss Milton paused. Ronder said nothing.

"Well, sir, things got so bad that Miss Burnett went away to the sea. During her absence Mrs. Brandon came to the house quite regularly, and Mrs. Baker told us that they scarcely seemed to mind who saw them."

As Ronder looked at her he realised how little he knew about women. He hated to realise this, as he hated to realise any ignorance or weakness in himself, but in the face of the woman opposite to him there was a mixture of motives—of greed, revenge, yes, and strangely enough, of a virgin's outraged propriety—that was utterly alien to his experience. He felt his essential, his almost inhuman, celibacy more at that moment, perhaps, than he had ever felt it before.

"Well, sir, this went on for some weeks. Miss Burnett returned, but, as Mrs. Baker said, the situation remained very strained. To come to my point, four days ago I was in one evening paying Mrs. Baker a visit. Every one was out, although Mr. Morris was expected home for his dinner. There was a ring at the bell and Mrs. Baker said, 'You go, my dear.' She was busy at the moment with the cooking. I went and opened the hall-door and there was Mrs. Brandon's parlourmaid that I knew by sight. 'I have a note for Mr. Morris,' she said. 'You can give it to me,' I said. She seemed to hesitate, but I told her if she didn't give it to me she might as well take it away again, because there was no one else in the house. That seemed to settle her, so telling me it was something special, and was to be given to Mr. Morris as soon as possible, she left it with me and went. She'd never seen me before, I daresay, and didn't know I didn't belong to the house." She paused, then opening her little eyes wide and staring at Ronder as though she were seeing him for the first time in her life she said softly, "I have the note here."

She opened her black bag slowly, peered into it, produced a piece of paper out of it, and shut it with a sharp little click.

"You've kept it?" asked Ronder.

"I've kept it," she repeated, nodding her head. "I know many would say I was wrong. But was I? That's the question. In any case that is another matter between myself and my Maker."

"Please read this, sir?" She held out the paper to him, He took it and after a moment's hesitation read it. It had neither date nor address. It ran as follows:

DEAREST—I am sending this by a safe hand to tell you that I cannot possibly get down to-night. I am so sorry and most dreadfully disappointed, but I will explain everything when we meet to-morrow. This is to prevent your waiting on when I'm not coming.

There was no signature.

"You had no right to keep this," he said to her angrily. As he spoke he looked at the piece of paper and felt again how strange and foreign to him the whole nature of woman was. The risks that they would take! The foolish mad things that they would do to satisfy some caprice or whim!

"How do you know that this was written by Mrs. Brandon?" he asked.

"Of course I know her handwriting very well," Miss Milton answered. "She often wrote to me when I was at the Library."

He was silent. He was seeing those two in the new light of this letter. So they were really lovers, the drab, unromantic, plain, dull, middle-aged souls! What had they seen in one another? What had they felt, to drive them to deeds so desperate, yes, and so absurd? Was there then a world right outside his ken, a world from which he had been since his birth excluded?

Absent-mindedly he had put the letter down on his table. Quickly she stretched out her gloved hand and took it. The bag clicked over it.

"Why have you brought this to me?" he asked, looking at her with a disgust that he did not attempt to conceal.

"You are the first person to whom I have spoken about the matter," she answered. "I have not said anything even to Mrs. Baker. I have had the letter for several days and have not known what is right to do about it."

"There is only one thing that is right to do about it," he answered sharply. "Burn it."

"And say nothing to anybody about it? Oh, Canon Ronder, surely that would not be right. I should not like people to think that you had given me such advice. To allow the Rector of St. James' to continue in his position, with so many looking up to him, and he committing such sins. Oh, no, sir, I cannot feel that to be right!"

"It is not our business," he answered angrily. "It is not our affair."

"Very well, sir." She got up. "It's good of you to give me your opinion. It is not our affair. Quite so. But it is Archdeacon Brandon's affair. He should see this letter. I thought that perhaps you yourself might like to speak to him——" she paused.

"I will have nothing to do with it," he answered, getting up and standing over her. "You did very wrong to keep the letter. You are cherishing evil passions in your heart, Miss Milton, that will bring you nothing but harm and sorrow in the end. You have come to me for advice, you say. Well, I give it to you. Burn that letter and forget what you know."

Her complexion had changed to a strange muddy grey as he spoke.

"There are others in this town, Canon Ronder," she said, "who are cherishing much the same passions as myself, although they may not realise it. I thought it wise to tell you what I know. As you will not help me, I know now what to do. I am grateful for your advice—which, however, I do not think you wish me to follow."

With one last look at him she moved softly to the door and was gone. She seemed to him to leave some muddy impression of her personality upon the walls and furniture of the room. He flung up the window, walked about rubbing his hands against one another behind his back, hating everything around him.

The words of the note repeated themselves again and again in his head.

"Dearest...safe hand...dreadfully disappointed.... Dearest."

Those two! He saw Morris, with his weak face, his mild eyes, his rather shabby clothes, his hesitating manner, his thinning hair—and Mrs. Brandon, so mediocre that no one ever noticed her, never noticed anything about her—what she wore, what she said, what she did, anything!

Those two! Ghosts! and in love so that they would risk loss of everything —reputation, possessions, family—that they might obtain their desire! In love as he had never been in all his life!

His thoughts turned, with a little shudder, to Miss Milton. She had come to him because she thought that he would like to share in her revenge. That, more than anything, hurt him, bringing him down to her base, sordid level, making him fellow-conspirator with her, plotting...ugh! How cruelly unfair that he, upright, generous, should be involved like this so meanly.

He washed his hands in the little dressing-room near the study, scrubbing them as though the contact with Miss Milton still lingered there. Hating his own company, he went downstairs, where he found Ellen Stiles, having had a very happy tea with his aunt, preparing to depart.

"Going, Ellen?" he asked.

She was in the highest spirits and a hat of vivid green.

"Yes, I must go. I've been here ever so long. We've had a perfectly lovely time, talking all about poor Mrs. Maynard and her consumption. There's simply no hope for her, I'm afraid; it's such a shame when she has four small children; but as I told her yesterday, it's really best to make up one's mind to the worst, and there'll be no money for the poor little things after she's gone. I don't know what they'll do."

"You must have cheered her up," said Ronder.

"Well, I don't know about that. Like all consumptives she will persist in thinking that she's going to get well. Of course, if she had money enough to go to Davos or somewhere...but she hasn't, so there's simply no hope at all."

"If you are going along I'll walk part of the way with you," said Ronder.

"That will be nice." Ellen kissed Miss Ronder very affectionately. "Good-bye, you darling. I have had a nice time. Won't it be awful if it's wet next week? Simply everything will be ruined. I don't see much chance of its being fine myself. Still you never can tell."

They went out together. The Precincts was quiet and deserted; a bell, below in the sunny town, was ringing for Evensong. "Morris's church, perhaps," thought Ronder. The light was stretched like a screen of coloured silk across the bright green of the Cathedral square; the great Church itself was in shadow, misty behind the sun, and shifting from shade to shade as though it were under water.

When they had walked a little way Ellen said: "What's the matter?"

"The matter?" Ronder echoed.

"Yes. You're looking worried, and that's so rare with you that when it happens one's interested."

He hesitated, looking at her and almost stopping in his walk. An infernal nuisance if Ellen Stiles were to choose this moment for the exercise of her unfortunate curiosity! He had intended to go down High Street with her and then to go by way of Orange Street to Foster's rooms; but one could reach Foster more easily by the little crooked street behind the Cathedral. He would say good-bye to her here.... Then another thought struck him. He would go on with her.

"Isn't your curiosity terrible, Ellen!" he said, laughing. "If you didn't happen to have a kind heart hidden somewhere about you, you'd be a perfectly impossible woman. As it is, I'm not sure that you're not."

"I think perhaps I am," Ellen answered, laughing. "I do take a great interest in other people's affairs. Well, why not? It prevents me from being bored."

"But not from being a bore," said Ronder. "I hate to be unpleasant, but there's nothing more tiresome than being asked why one's in a certain mood. However, leave me alone and I will repay your curiosity by some of my own. Tell me, how much are people talking about Mrs. Brandon and Morris?"

This time she was genuinely surprised. On so many occasions he had checked her love of gossip and scandal and now he was deliberately provoking it. It was as though he had often lectured her about drinking too much and then had been discovered by her, secretly tippling.

"Oh, everybody's talking, of course," she said. "Although you pretend never to talk scandal you must know enough about the town to know that. They happen to be talking less just at the moment because nobody's thinking of anything but the Jubilee."

"What I want to know," said Ronder, "is how much Brandon is supposed to be aware of—and does he mind?"

"He's aware of nothing," said Ellen decisively. "Nothing at all. He's always looked upon his wife as a piece of furniture, neither very ornamental nor very useful, but still his property, and therefore to be reckoned on as stable and submissive. I don't think that in any case he would ever dream that she could disobey him in anything, but, as it happens, his son's flight to London and his own quarrel with you entirely possess his mind. He talks, eats, thinks, dreams nothing else."

"What would he do, do you think," pursued Ronder, "if he were to discover that there really was something wrong, that she had been unfaithful?"

"Why, is there proof?" asked Ellen Stiles, eagerly, pausing for a moment in her excitement.

The sharp note of eagerness in her voice checked him.

"No—nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. Of course not. And how should I know if there were?"

"You're just the person who would know," answered Ellen decisively. "However many other people you've hoodwinked, you haven't taken me in all these years. But I'll tell you this as from one friend to another, that you've made the first mistake in your life by allowing this quarrel with Brandon to become so public."

He marvelled again, as he had often marvelled before, at her unerring genius for discovering just the thing to say to her friends that would hurt them most. And yet with that she had a kind heart, as he had had reason often enough to know. Queer things, women!

"It's not my fault if the quarrel's become public," he said. They were turning down the High Street now and he could not show all the vexation that he felt. "It's Brandon's own idiotic character and the love of gossip displayed by this town."

"Well, then," she said, delighted that she had annoyed him and that he was showing his annoyance, "that simply means that you've been defeated by circumstances. For once they've been too strong for you. If you like that explanation you'd better take it."

"Now, Ellen," he said, "you're trying to make me lose my temper in revenge for my not satisfying your curiosity; give up. You've tried before and you've always failed."

She laughed, putting her hand through his arm.

"Yes, don't let's quarrel," she said. "Isn't it delightful to-night with the sunlight and the excitement and every one out enjoying themselves? I love to see them happy, poor things. It's only the successful and the self-important and the patronising that I want to pull down a little. As soon as I find myself wanting to dig at somebody, I know it's because they're getting above themselves. You'd better be careful. I'm not at all sure that success isn't going to your head."

"Success?" he asked.

"Yes. Don't look so innocent. You've been here only a few months and already you're the only man here who counts. You've beaten Brandon in the very first round, and it's absurd of you to pretend to an old friend like myself that you don't know that you have. But be careful."

The street was shining, wine-coloured, against the black walls that hemmed it in, black walls scattered with sheets of glass, absurd curtains of muslin, brown, shabby, self-ashamed backs of looking-glasses, door-knobs, flower-pots, and collections of furniture, books and haberdashery.

"Suppose you leave me alone for a moment, Ellen," said Ronder, "and think, of somebody else. What I really want to know is, how intimate are you with Mrs. Brandon?"

"Intimate?"

"Yes. I mean—could you speak to her? Tell her, in some way, to be more careful, that she's in danger. Women know how to do these things. I want to find somebody."

He paused. Did he want to find somebody? Why this strange tenderness towards Mrs. Brandon of which he was quite suddenly conscious? Was it his disgust of Miss Milton, so that he could not bear to think of any one in the power of such a woman?

"Warn her?" said Ellen. "Then she is in danger."

"Only if, as you say, every one is talking. I'm sorry for her."

They had come to the parting of their ways. "No. I don't know her well enough for that. She wouldn't take it from me. She wouldn't take it from anybody. She's prouder than you'd think. And it's my belief she doesn't care if she is in danger. She'd rather welcome it. That's my belief."

"Good-bye then. I won't ask you to keep our talk quiet. I don't suppose you could if you wanted to. But I will ask you to be kind."

"Why should I be kind? And you know you don't want me to be, really."

"I do want you to be."

"No, it's part of the game you're playing. Or if it isn't, you're changing more than you've ever changed before. Look out! Perhaps it's you that's in danger!"

As he turned up Orange Street he wondered again what impulse it was that was making him sorry for Mrs. Brandon. He always wished people to be happy—life was easier so—but had he, even yesterday, been told that he would ever feel concern for Mrs. Brandon, that supreme symbol of feminine colourless mediocrity, he would have laughed derisively.

Then the beauty of the hour drove everything else from him. The street climbed straight into the sky, a broad flat sheet of gold, and on its height the monument, perched against the quivering air, was a purple shaft, its gesture proud, haughty, exultant. Suddenly he saw in front of him, moving with quick, excited steps, Mrs. Brandon, an absurdly insignificant figure against that splendour.

He felt as though his thoughts had evoked her out of space, and as though she was there against her will. Then he felt that he, too, was there against his will, and that he had nothing to do with either the time or the place.

He caught her up. She started nervously when he said, "Good evening, Mrs. Brandon," and raised her little mouse-face with its mild, hesitating, grey eyes to his. He knew her only slightly and was conscious that she did not like him. That was not his affair; she had become something quite new to him since he had gained this knowledge of her—she was provocative, suggestive, even romantic.

"Good evening, Canon Ronder." She did not smile nor slacken her steps.

"Isn't this a lovely evening?" he said. "If we have this weather next week we shall be lucky indeed."

"Yes, shan't we—shan't we?" she said nervously, not considering him, but staring straight at the street in front of her.

"I think all the preparations are made," Ronder went on in the genial easy voice that he always adopted with children and nervous women. "There should be a tremendous crowd if the weather's fine. People already are pouring in from every part of the country, they tell me—sleeping anywhere, in the fields and the hedges. This old town will be proud of herself."

"Yes, yes," Mrs. Brandon looked about her as though she were trying to find a way of escape. "I'm so glad you think that the weather will be fine. I'm so glad. I think it will myself. I hope Miss Ronder is well."

"Very well, thank you." What could Morris see in her, with her ill- fitting clothes, her skirt trailing a little in the dust, her hat too big and heavy for her head, her hair escaping in little untidy wisps from under it? She looked hot, too, and her nose was shiny.

"You're coming to the Ball of course," he went on, relieved that now they were near the top of the little hill. "It's to be the best Ball the Assembly Rooms have seen since—since Jane Austen."

"Jane Austen?" asked Mrs. Brandon vaguely.

"Well, her time, you know, when dancing was all the rage. We ought to have more dances here, I think, now that there are so many young people about."

"Yes, I agree with you. My daughter is coming out at the Ball."

"Oh, is she? I'm sure she'll have a good time. She's so pretty. Every one's fond of her."

He waited, but apparently Mrs. Brandon had nothing more to say. There was a pause, then Mrs. Brandon, as though she had been suddenly pushed to it by some one behind her, held out her hand....

"Good evening, Canon Ronder."

He said good-bye and watched her for a moment as she went up past the neat little villas, her dress trailing behind her, her hat bobbing with every step. He looked up at the absurd figure on the top of the monument, the gentleman in frock-coat and tall hat commemorated there. The light had left him. He was not purple now but a dull grey. He, too, had doubtless had his romance, blood and tears, anger and agony for somebody. How hard to keep out of such things, and yet one must if one is to achieve anything. Keep out of it, detached, observant, comfortable. Strange that in life comfort should be so difficult to attain!

Climbing Green Lane he was surprised to feel how hot it was. The trees that clustered over his head seemed to have gathered together all the heat of the day. Everything conspired to annoy him! Bodger's Street, when he turned into it, was, from his point of view, at its very worst, crowded and smelly and rocking with noise. The fields behind Bodger's Street and Canon's Yard sloped down the hill then up again out into the country beyond.

It was here on this farther hill that the gipsies had been allowed to pitch their caravans, and that the Fair was already preparing its splendours. It was through these gates that the countrymen would penetrate the town's defences, just as on the other side, low down in Seatown on the Pol's banks, the seafaring men, fishermen and sailors and merchantmen, were gathering. Bodger's Street was already alive with the anticipation of the coming week's festivities. Gas-jets were flaming behind hucksters' booths, all the population of the place was out on the street enjoying the fine summer evening, shouting, laughing, singing, quarrelling. The effect of the street illumined by these uncertain flares that leapt unnaturally against the white shadow of the summer sky was of something mediaeval, and that impression was deepened by the overhanging structure of the Cathedral that covered the faint blue and its little pink clouds like a swinging spider's web.

Ronder, however, was not now thinking of the town. His mind was fixed upon his approaching interview with Foster. Foster had just paid a visit, quite unofficial and on a private personal basis, to Wistons, to sound him about the Pybus living and his action if he were offered it.

Ronder understood men very much better than he understood women. He understood Foster so long as ambition and religion were his motives, but there was something else in play that he did not understand. It was not only that Foster did not like him—he doubted whether Foster liked anybody except the Bishop—it was rather perhaps that Foster did not like himself. Now it is the first rule of fanaticism that you should be so lost in the impulse of your inspiration that you should have no power left with which to consider yourself at all. Foster was undoubtedly a fanatic, but he did consider himself and even despised himself. Ronder distrusted self- contempt in a man simply because nothing made him so uncomfortable as those moments of his own when he wondered whether he were all that he thought himself. Those moments did not last long, but he hated them so bitterly that he could not bear to see them at work in other people. Foster was the kind of fanatic who might at any minute decide to put peas in his shoes and walk to Jerusalem; did he so decide, he would abandon, for that decision, all the purposes for which he might at the time be working. Ronder would certainly never walk to Jerusalem.

The silence and peace of Canon's Yard when he left Bodger's Street was almost dramatic. All that penetrated there was a subdued buzz with an occasional shrill note as it might be on a penny whistle. The Yard was dark, lit only by a single lamp, and the cobbles uneven. Lights here and there set in the crooked old windows were secret and uncommunicative: the Cathedral towers seemed immensely tall against the dusk. It would not be dark for another hour and a half, but in those old rooms with their small casements light was thin and uncertain.

He climbed the rickety stairs to Foster's rooms. As always, something made him pause outside Foster's door and listen. All the sounds of the old building seemed to come up to him; not human voices and movements, but the life of the old house itself, the creaking protests of stairways, the sighs of reluctant doors, the harping groans of ill-mannered window- frames, the coughs and wheezes of trembling walls, the shudders of ill- boding banisters.

"This house will collapse, the first gale," he thought, and suddenly the Cathedral chimes, striking the half-hour, crashed through the wall, knocking and echoing as though their clatter belonged to that very house.

The echo died, and the old place recommenced its murmuring.

Foster, blinking like an old owl, came to the door and, without a word, led the way into his untidy room. He cleared a chair of papers and books and Ronder sat down.

"Well?" said Ronder.

Foster was in a state of overpowering excitement, but he looked to Ronder older and more worn than a week ago. There were dark pouches under his eyes, his cheeks were drawn, and his untidy grey hair seemed thin and ragged—here too long, there showing the skull guant and white beneath it. His eyes burnt with a splendid flame; in them there was the light of eternal life.

"Well?" said Ronder again, as Foster did not answer his first question.

"He's coming," Foster cried, striding about the room, his shabby slippers giving a ghostly tip-tap behind him. "He's coming! Of course I had never doubted it, but I hadn't expected that he would be so eager as he is. He let himself go to me at once. Of course he knew that I wasn't official, that I had no backing at all. He's quite prepared for things to go the other way, although I told him that I thought there would be little chance of that if we all worked together. He didn't ask many questions. He knows all the conditions well. Since I saw him last he's gained in every way— wiser, better disciplined, more sure of himself—everything that I have never been...." Foster paused, then went on. "I think never in all my life have I felt affection so go out to another human being. He is a man after my own heart—a child of God, an inheritor of Eternal Life, a leader of men——"

Ronder interrupted him.

"Yes, but as to detail. Did you discuss that? He knew of the opposition?"

Foster waved his hand contemptuously. "Brandon? What does that amount to? Why, even in the week that I have been away his power has lessened. The hand of God is against him. Everything is going wrong with him. I loathe scandal, but there is actually talk going on in the town about his wife. I could feel pity for the man were he not so dangerous."

"You are wrong there, Foster," Ronder said eagerly. "Brandon isn't finished yet—by no manner of means. He still has most of the town behind him and a big majority with the Cathedral people. He stands for what they think or don't think—old ideas, conservatism, every established dogma you can put your hand on, bad music, traditionalism, superstition and carelessness. It is not Brandon himself we are fighting, but what he stands for."

Foster stopped and looked down at Ronder. "You'll forgive me if I speak my mind," he said. "I'm an older man than you are, and in any case it's my way to say what I think. You know that by this time. You've made a mistake in allowing this quarrel with Brandon to become so personal a matter."

Ronder flushed angrily.

"Allowing!" he retorted. "As though that were not the very thing that I've tried to prevent it from becoming. But the old fool has rushed out and shouted his grievances to everybody. I suppose you've heard of the ridiculous quarrel we had coming away from Carpledon. The whole town knows of it. There never was a more ridiculous scene. He stood in the middle of the road and screamed like a madman. It's my belief he is going mad! A precious lot I had to do with that. I was as amiable as possible. But you can't deal with him. His conceit and his obstinacy are monstrous."

Nothing was more irritating in Foster than the way that he had of not listening to excuses; he always brushed them aside as though they were beneath notice.

"You shouldn't have made it a personal thing," he repeated. "People will take sides—are already doing so. It oughtn't to be between you two at all."

"I tell you it is not!" Ronder answered angrily. Then with a great effort he pulled himself in. "I don't know what has been happening to me lately," he said with a smile. "I've always prided myself on keeping out of quarrels, and in any case I'm not going to quarrel with you. I'm sure you're right. It is a pity that the thing's become personal. I'll see what I can do."

But Foster paid as little attention to apologies as to excuses.

"That's been a mistake," he said; "and there have been other mistakes. You are too personally ambitious, Ronder. We are working for the glory of God and for no private interests whatever."

Ronder smiled. "You're hard on me," he said; "but you shall think what you like. I won't allow that I've been personally ambitious, but it's difficult sometimes when you're putting all your energies into a certain direction not to seem to be serving your own ends. I like power—who doesn't? But I would gladly sacrifice any personal success if that were needed to win the main battle."

"Win!" Foster cried. "Win! But we've got to win! There's never been such a chance for us! If Brandon wins now our opportunity is gone for another generation. What Wistons can do here if he comes! The power that he will be!"

Suddenly there came into Ronder's mind for the first time the thought that was to recur to him very often in the future. Was it wise of him to work for the coming of a man who might threaten his own power? He shook that from him. He would deal with that when the time came. For the present Brandon was enough....

"Now as to detail..." Ronder said.

They sat down at the paper-littered table. For another hour and a half they stayed there, and it would have been curious for an observer to see how, in this business, Ronder obtained an absolute mastery. Foster, the fire dead in his eyes, the light gone, followed him blindly, agreeing to everything, wondering at the clearness, order and discipline of his plans. An hour ago, treading the soil of his own country, he had feared no man, and his feeling for Ronder had been one half-contempt, half-suspicion. Now he was in the other's hands. This was a world into which he had never won right of entry.

The Cathedral chimes struck nine. Ronder got up and put his papers away with a little sigh of satisfaction. He knew that his work had been good.

"There's nothing that we've forgotten. Bentinck-Major will be caught before he knows where he is. Ryle too. Let us get through this next week safely and the battle's won."

Foster blinked.

"Yes, yes," he said hurriedly. "Yes, yes. Good-night, good-night," and almost pushed Ronder from the room.

"I don't believe he's taken in a word of it," Ronder thought, as he went down the creaking stairs.

At the top of Badger's Street he paused. The street was still; the sky was pale green on the horizon, purple overhead. The light was still strong, but, to the left beyond the sloping fields, the woods were banked black and sombre. From the meadow in front of the woods came the sounds of an encampment—women shouting, horses neighing, dogs barking. A few lights gleamed like red eyes. The dusky forms of caravans with their thick-set chimneys, ebony-coloured against the green sky, crouched like animals barking. A woman was singing, men's voices took her up, and the song came rippling across the little valley.

All the stir of an invading world was there.



Chapter II

Friday, June 18: Shadow Meets Shadow



On that Friday evening, about half-past six o'clock, Archdeacon Brandon, just as he reached the top of the High Street, saw God.

There was nothing either strange or unusual about this. Having had all his life the conviction that he and God were on the most intimate of terms, that God knew and understood himself and his wants better than any other friend that he had, that just as God had definitely deputed him to work out certain plans on this earth, so, at times, He needed his own help and advice, having never wavered for an instant in the very simplest tenets of his creed, and believing in every word of the New Testament as though the events there recorded had only a week ago happened in his own town under his own eyes—all this being so, it was not strange that he should sometimes come into close and actual contact with his Master.

It may be said that it was this very sense of contact, continued through long years of labour and success, that was the original foundation of the Archdeacon's pride. If of late years that pride had grown from the seeds of the Archdeacon's own self-confidence and appreciation, who can blame him?

We translate more easily than we know our gratitude to God into our admiration of ourselves.

Over and over again in the past, when he had been labouring with especial fervour, he was aware that, in the simplest sense of the word, God was "walking with him." He was conscious of a new light and heat, of a fresh companionship; he could almost translate into physical form that comradeship of which he was so tenderly aware. How could it be but that after such an hour he should look down from those glorious heights upon his other less favoured fellow-companions? No merit of his own that he had been chosen, but the choice had been made.

On this evening he was in sad need of comfort. Never in all his past years had life gone so hardly with him as it was going now. It was as though, about three or four months back, he had, without knowing it, stepped into some new and terrible country. One feature after another had changed, old familiar faces wore new unfamiliar disguises, every step that he took now seemed to be dangerous, misfortune after misfortune had come to him, at first slight and even ludicrous, at last with Falk's escape, serious and bewildering. Bewildering! That was the true word to describe his case! He was like a man moving through familiar country and overtaken suddenly by a dense fog. Through it all, examine it as minutely as he might, he could not see that he had committed the slightest fault.

He had been as he had always been, and yet the very face of the town was changed to him, his son had left him, even his wife, to whom he had been married for twenty years, was altered. Was it not natural, therefore, that he should attribute all of this to the only new element that had been introduced into his life during these last months, to the one human being alive who was his declared enemy, to the one man who had openly, in the public road, before witnesses, insulted him, to the man who, from the first moment of his coming to Polchester, had laughed at him and mocked and derided him?

To Ronder! To Ronder! The name was never out of his brain now, lying there, stirring, twisting in his very sleep, sneering, laughing even in the heart of his private prayers.

He was truly in need of God that evening, and there, at the top of the High Street, he saw Him framed in all the colour and glow and sparkling sunlight of the summer evening, filling him with warmth and new courage, surrounding him, enveloping him in love and tenderness.

Cynics might say that it was because the Archdeacon, no longer so young as he had been, was blown by his climb of the High Street and stood, breathing hard for a moment before he passed into the Precincts, lights dancing before his eyes as they will when one is out of breath, the ground swaying a little under the pressure of the heart, the noise of the town rocking in the ears.

That is for the cynics to say. Brandon knew; his experiences had been in the past too frequent for him, even now, to make a mistake.

Running down the hill went the High Street, decorated now with flags and banners in honour of the great event; cutting the sky, stretching from Brent's the haberdasher's across to Adams' the hairdresser's, was a vast banner of bright yellow silk stamped in red letters with "Sixty Years Our Queen. God Bless Her!"

Just beside the Archdeacon, above the door of the bookshop where he had once so ignominiously taken refuge, was a flag of red, white and blue, and opposite the bookseller's, at Gummridge's the stationer's, was a little festoon of flags and a blue message stamped on a white ground: "God Bless Our Queen: Long May She Reign!"