Hugh Walpole

“ He's only my friend. I love him, but he doesn't love me. Do you hear? He's had nothing to do with this!"
"You love him!" whispered Brandon.
"I've loved him since the first moment I saw him. I've wanted some one to love for years--years and years and years. You didn't love me, so then I hoped Falk would, and Falk didn't, so then I found the first person--any one who would be kind to me. And he was kind--he is kind--the kindest man in the world. And he saw that I was lonely, so he let me talk to him and go to him--but none of this is his doing. He's only been kind. ”

“ Throughout the Early Celebration he remained in a condition of amazed bewilderment. From his position just above the altar-rails he could see very clearly the Bishop's Tomb; the morning sun reflected in purple colours from the East window played upon its blue stone. It caught the green ring and flashed splashes of fire from its heart. His mind went back to that day, not so very long ago, when, with triumphant happiness, he had seemed to share in the Bishop's spirit, to be dust of his dust, and bone of his bone. That had been the very day, he remembered, of Falk's return from Oxford. ”

“ Everything at home, in short, was difficult and confused. Nobody was happy, nobody was natural. Even her own private history, if she looked into it too closely, did not show her any very optimistic colours. She had not seen Johnny St. Leath now for a fortnight, nor heard from him, and those precious words under the Arden Gate one evening were beginning already to appear a dim unsubstantial dream. However, if there was one quality that Joan Brandon possessed in excess of all others, it was a simple fidelity to the cause or person in front of her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Often Lady St. Leath was one of these, but to-day she was sunk into a kind of stupor and did not move. Mrs. Combermere, Ellen Stiles and Mrs. Sampson were the guilty ones.
Rustle of their dresses, the heavy flop of the side Cloister door as it closed behind them, and then silence once more and the thin angry voice of Canon Foster, "Let us pray."
Out in the grey Cloisters it was charming. The mild April sun flooded the square of grass that lay in the middle of the thick rounded pillars like a floor of bright green glass. ”

“ In truth, this part of Polchester is neglected and forgotten; it has not sunk like Seatown into dirt and degradation, it has still an air of romance and colour, but the life is gone from it.
Canon's Yard is behind the Hostel and is a little square, shut-in, cobbled place with tall thin houses closing it in and the Cathedral towers overhanging it. Rooks and bells and the rattle of carts upon the cobbles make a perpetual clatter here, and its atmosphere is stuffy and begrimed. ”

“ The situation in the Brandon family had not been made any easier by Falk's strange liking for the man. Joan did not pretend that she understood her brother or had ever been in any way close to him. When she had been little he had seemed to be so infinitely above her as to be in another world, and now that they seemed almost of an age he was strange to her like some one of foreign blood. She knew that she did not count in his scheme of life at all, that he never thought of her nor wanted her. ”

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

“ He turned restlessly, almost savagely, to Ronder. "Can you be happy and comfortable and at ease, when you see what Christ might be to human beings and what He is? Who thinks of Him, who cares for Him, who loves His sweetness and charity and tenderness? Why is something always in the way, always, always, always? Love! Charity! Doesn't such a place as this Cathedral breed hatred and malice and pride and jealousy? And isn't its very beauty a contempt?...And now what right have you to help my appointment to Pybus?" ”

“ After all, if through life she were destined to be an old maid--and that, in the tragic moment of her youth that was now upon her, seemed her inevitable destiny--here was some one for whom at last she could care. She had felt before she came down to dinner that she was old and ugly and desperately unattractive. Across the dinner-table she flung away, as she imagined for ever, all hopes for beauty and charm; she would love her father and he should love her, and every other man in the world might vanish for all that she cared. ”

“ That tomb of the Black Bishop seemed to me the place where He'd most likely be, and I used to fancy sometimes that He did speak from the heart of that stone. But I daresay it was the old Bishop himself.
"Anyway, I determined long ago that the Cathedral has a life of its own, quite apart from any of us. It has more immortality in one stone of its nave than we have in all our bodies."
"Don't be too sure of that," Ronder said. "We have our immortality--a tiny flame, but I believe that it never dies. Beauty comes from it and dwells in it. We increase it or diminish it as we live." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Brandon turned the pages of her book, her ears straining for the sound of Falk's return.
As she sat there, so inattentively turning the pages of her book, the foreboding sense of some approaching drama flooded the room. For how many years had she lived from day to day and nothing had occurred--so long that life had been unconscious, doped, inert. Now it had sprung into vitality again with the sudden frantic impertinence of a Jack-in-the-Box. For twenty years you are dry on the banks, half-asleep, stretching out lazy fingers for food, slumbering, waking, slumbering again. ”

“ Martin spoke eagerly: "Is that the Wistons of the Four Creeds?--the man who wrote The New Apocalypse?"
Foster smiled. "There's only one Wistons," he said, pride ringing in his voice as though he were speaking of his favourite son, "for all the world."
"Why, that would be magnificent," Martin said, "if he'd come. But would he? I should think that very doubtful."
"I think he would," said Foster softly, still as though he were speaking to himself.
"Why, that, of course, is wonderful!" Martin looked round upon them all, his eyes glowing. "There isn't a man in England----" He broke off. ”

“ Polchester was the world and the world was Polchester. They were at least a century nearer to Jane Austen's day than they were to George the Fifth's.
Joan saw, with relief, so soon as she entered the room, that the St. Leath women were absent. They overawed her and were so much older than the others there that they brought constraint with them and embarrassment.
Any stranger, coming suddenly into the room, must have felt its light and gaiety and happiness. The high wide dining-room windows were open and looked, over sloping lawns, down to the Pol and up again to the woods beyond. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the band had passed a little way down the street and their somewhat raucous notes were modified by distance, the sun came out in especial glory, as though to take his own peep at the show, the gilt and cloth of gold shone and gleamed, the chair of Britannia rocked as though it were bursting with pride, and the Cathedral bells, as though they too wished to lend their dignified blessing to the scene, began to ring for Evensong. ”

“ Now were Lawrence and Cobbett in their true glory--Lawrence was in his fine purple robe, the Sunday silk one. He stood at the far end of the nave, just under the choir-screen, waiting for the aristocracy, for whom the front seats were guarded with cords which only he might untie. How deeply pleased he was when some unfortunate stranger, ignorant in the ways of the Cathedral, walked, with startling clatter, up the whole length of the shining nave and endeavoured to penetrate one of these sacred defences! ”

“ Suddenly, just as they reached the dark shadows of the Arden Gate, he seemed to wake up. His voice was quite vigorous, his eyes, tired and worn as they were, bravely scanned Brandon's health and vigour.
"We all come to it, you know. Yes, we do. The very strongest of us. You're a young man, Archdeacon, by my years, and I hope you may long live to continue your good work in this place. All the same, you'll be old yourself one day. No one escapes.... No one escapes...." ”

“ Perhaps once long ago, when there were only the Cathedral, the Castle, the Rock, and a few cottages down by the river, when, at night-tide, strange foreign ships came up from the sea, when the woods were wild forest and the downs were bare and savage, Seatown had its romance, but that was long ago. Seatown, in these latter days, was a place of bad drainage, bad drinking, bad living and bad dying. The men who haunted its dirty, narrow little streets were loafers and idlers and castaways. ”

“ Nothing is stranger (and perhaps more fortunate) than the speed with which the past is forgotten. Brandon might have been all his days the odd, muttering, eye-wandering figure that he now appeared. Where was the Viking now? Where the finest specimen of physical health in all Glebeshire? Where the King and Crowned Monarch of Polchester?
In the dust and debris of the broken past. "Poor old Archdeacon." "A bit queer in the upper storey." "Not to be wondered at after all the trouble he's had." "They break up quickly, those strong-looking men." ”

“ Brandon has found a friend. My motto in life is, 'Let us all contribute to the happiness of one another to the best of our strength.'
"Truly, that's a thing we can all do, isn't it? Life isn't too bright for some people, I can't help thinking. And courage is the thing. After all, it isn't life that is important but simply how brave you are.
"At least that's my poor little idea of it. But it does seem a little odd about Mrs. Brandon. She's always kept so much to herself until now."
"You worry too much about others, dear Julia," said Miss Ronder. ”

“ It seemed itself to take an active part in the preparations, the old houses smiling to one another at the plans that they overheard, and the birds, of whom there were a vast number, flying from wall to wall, from garden to garden, from chimney to chimney, with the exciting news that they had gathered.
Every shop in the High Street seemed to whisper to Falk as he passed: "Surely you are not going to leave us. We can offer you such charming things. We've never been so gay in our lives before as we are going to be now." ”

“ All the servants feel it, and Gladys is going at the end of the month.
And oh, Falk! I'm so sorry for him! It does seem so strange that everything should have changed for him as it has. I feel his own bewilderment. A year ago he seemed so strong and safe and secure as though he would go on like that for ever, and hadn't an enemy in the world. How could he have? He's never meant harm to any one. Your going away I can understand, but mother, I feel as though I never could speak to her again. To be so cruel to father and to write him such a letter! ”

“ I came out of that believing only in the beauty of Christ's life, clinging to that, and saying to myself, 'Such a friend have I--then life is not all lost to me'--and slowly, gradually, I came back into touch with Him and knew Him as I had never known Him before, and, through Him, once again God the Father. And now, even in my old age, temptation is still with me. I long to die. I am tempted often to look upon men and women as shadows that have no longer any connection with me. ”

“ Miss Dobell, who was in appearance like one of those neat silk umbrellas with the head of a parrot for a handle, and whose voice was like the running brook both for melody and monotony, thus suddenly appealed to, blushed, stammered, and finally admitted that the Archdeacon was, in her opinion, a hero.
"That's not exactly the point, dear Mary," said Miss Stiles. "The point is, surely, that an elephant straight from the desert ate our best Archdeacon's best hat in the High Street. ”

“ Falk did not sleep at all that night. This was only one of many sleepless nights, but it was the worst of them. The night was warm, and a faint dim colour lingered behind the treetops of the garden beyond his open window. First he lay under the clothes, then upon the top of his bed, then stripped, plunging his head into a basin of water, then naked save for his soft bedroom slippers, paced his room...His head was a flaming fire. The pale light seemed for an instant to vanish, and the world was dark and silent. ”

“ And please go, Johnny, because it's so hard while you're here. And we must do it. I'll never change, but you're free to, and you ought to. It's your duty to find some one more satisfactory than me."
But Johnny appeared not to have heard her last words. He had been looking about him, at the walls, the windows, the ceiling--rather as a young dog sniffs some place new to him.
"Joan, tell me. Are you all right here? You oughtn't to be all alone here like this, just with your father. Can't you get some one to come and stay?" ”

“ You like to think it's you who's been the mighty fine fellow all this time. Well, it isn't you at all. It's the Cathedral. The Cathedral's jealous, you know--don't like its servants taking all the credit to themselves. Pride's dangerous, Canon Ronder. In a year or two's time, when you're feeling pretty pleased with yourself, you just look back on the Archdeacon's history for a moment and consider it. It may have a lesson for you. Good morning, Canon Ronder. ”