The Cathedral Part 24

Old Canon Foster was preaching to-day. Always at the conclusion of the Anthem certain ruffians, visitors, tourists, clattered out. No sermon for them. They did not matter very greatly because they were far away at the back of the nave, and n.o.body need look at them; but on Foster's preaching days certain of the aristocracy also retired, and this was disconcerting because their seats were prominent ones and their dresses were of silk.

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 gra.s.s that lay in the middle of the thick rounded pillars like a floor of bright green gla.s.s.

The ladies stood for a moment looking out into the sunny silence. The Cathedral was hushed behind them; Ellen Stiles was looking very gay and very hideous in a large hat stifled with flowers, set sideways on her head, and a bright purple silk dress pulled in tightly at the waist, rising to high puffed shoulders. Her figure was not suited to the fas.h.i.+on of the day.

Mrs. Sampson explained that she was suffering from one of the worst of her nervous headaches and that she could not have endured the service another moment. Miss Stiles was all eager solicitude.

"I _am_ so sorry. I know how you are when you get one of those things. Nothing does it any good, does it? I know you've tried everything, and it simply goes on for days and days, getting worse and worse. And the really terrible part of them is that, with you, they seem to be const.i.tutional. No doctors can do anything--when they're const.i.tutional.

There you are for the rest of your days!"

Mrs. Sampson gave a little s.h.i.+ver.

"I must say, Dr. Puddifoot seems to be very little use," she moaned.

"Oh! Puddifoot!" Miss Stiles was contemptuous. "He's past his work. That's one comfort about this place. If any one's ill he dies. No false hopes. At least, we know where we are."

They walked through the Martyr's Pa.s.sage out into the full sunlight of the Precincts.

"What a jolly day!" said Mrs. Combermere, "I shall take my dogs for a walk. By the way, Ellen," she turned round to her friend, "how did Miss Burnett's tea-party go? I haven't seen you since."

"Oh, it was too funny!" Miss Stiles giggled. "You never saw such a mixture, and I don't think Miss Burnett knew who any one was. Not that she had much time to think, poor dear, she was so worried with the tea. Such a maid as she had you never saw!"

"A mixture?" asked Mrs. Combermere. "Who were they?"

"Oh, Canon Ronder and Bentinck-Major and Mrs. Brandon and--Oh, yes!

actually Falk Brandon!"

"Falk Brandon there?"

"Yes, wasn't it the strangest thing. I shouldn't have thought he'd have had time--However, you told me not to, so I won't--"

"Who did you talk to?"

"I talked to Miss Burnett most of the time. I tried to cheer her up. No one else paid the least attention to her."

"She's a very stupid person, it seems to me," Mrs. Sampson murmured. "But of course I know her very slightly."

"Stupid!" Miss Stiles laughed. "Why, she hasn't an idea in her head. I don't believe that she knows it's Jubilee Year. Positively!"

A little wind blew sportively around Miss Stiles' large hat. They all moved forward.

"The funny thing was--" Miss Stiles paused and looked apprehensively at Mrs. Combermere. "I know you don't like scandal, but of course this isn't scandal--there's nothing in it--"

"Come on, Ellen. Out with it," said Mrs. Combermere.

"Well, Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris. I caught the oddest look between them."

"Look! What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Combermere sharply. Mrs. Sampson stood still, her mouth a little open, forgetting her neuralgia.

"Of course it was nothing. All the same, they were standing at the window saying something, looking at one another, well, positively as though they had known one another intimately for years. I a.s.sure you--"

Mrs. Combermere turned upon her. "Of all the nasty minds in this town, Ellen, you have the nastiest. I've told you so before. People can't even look at one another now. Why, you might as well say that I'd been gazing at your Ronder when he came to tea the other day."

"Perhaps I shall," said Miss Stiles, laughing. "It would be a delightful story to spread. Seriously, why not make a match of it? You'd just suit one another."

"Once is enough for me in a life-time," said Mrs. Combermere grimly. "Now, Ellen, come along. No more mischief. Leave poor little Morris alone."

"Mrs. Brandon and Mr. Morris!" repeated Mrs. Sampson, her eyes wide open.

"Well, I do declare."

The ladies separated, and the Precincts was abandoned for a time to its beautiful Sunday peace and calm.

Chapter III

The May-day Prologue

May is the finest month of all the year in Glebes.h.i.+re. The days are warm but not too hot; the sky is blue but not too blue, the air is soft but with a touch of sharpness The valleys are pressed down and overflowing with flowers; the cuckoo cries across the gla.s.sy waters of blue harbours, and the gorse is honey-scented among the rocks.

May-day in Polchester this year was warm and bright, with a persistent cuckoo somewhere in the Dean's garden, and a very shrill-voiced canary in Miss Dobell's open window. The citizens of Polchester were suddenly aware that summer was close upon them. Doors were flung open and the gardens sinuously watered, summer clothes were dragged from their long confinement and anxiously overlooked, Mr. Martin, the stationer, hung a row of his coloured Polchester views along a string across his window, the dark, covered ways of the market-place quivered and shone with pots of spring flowers, and old Simon's water-cart made its first trembling and shaking appearance down the High Street.

All this was well enough and customary enough, but what marked this spring from any other spring that had ever been was that it was Jubilee Year. It was on this warm May-day that Polchester people realised suddenly that the Jubilee was not far away. The event had not quite the excitement and novelty that the Jubilee of 1887 had had; there was, perhaps, in London and the larger towns, something of a sense of repet.i.tion. But Polchester was far from the general highway and, although the picture of the wonderful old lady, now nearly eighty years of age, was strong before every one's vision, there was a deep determination to make this year's celebration a great Polchester affair, to make it the celebration of Polchester men and Polchester history and Polchester progress.

The programme had been long arranged--the great Service in the Cathedral, the Ball in the a.s.sembly Rooms, the Flower Show in the St. Leath Castle grounds, the Torchlight Procession, the Croquet Tournament, the School- children's Tea and the School Cricket-match. A fine programme, and the Jubilee Committee, with the Bishop, the Mayor, and the Countess of St.

Leath for its presidents, had already held several meetings.

Nevertheless, Glebes.h.i.+re has a rather languis.h.i.+ng climate. Polchester has been called by its critics "a lazy town," and it must be confessed that everything in connection with the Jubilee had been jogging along very sleepily until of a sudden this warm May-day arrived, and every one sprang into action. The Mayor called a meeting of the town branch of the Committee, and the Bishop out at Carpledon summoned his ecclesiastics, and Joan found a note from Gladys Sampson beckoning her to the Sampson house to do her share of the glorious work. It had been decided by the Higher Powers that it would be a charming thing for some of the younger Polchester ladies to have in charge the working of two of the flags that were to decorate the a.s.sembly Room walls on the night of the Ball. Gladys Sampson, who, unlike her mother, never suffered from headaches, and was a strong, determined, rather masculine girl, soon had the affair in hand, and the party was summoned.

I would not like to say that Polchester had a more sn.o.bbish spirit than other Cathedral towns, but there is no doubt that, thirty years ago, the lines were drawn very clearly indeed between the "Cathedral" and the "Others."

"Cathedral" included not only the daughters of the Canons and what Mr.

Martin, in his little town guide-book, called "General Ecclesiastical Phenomena," but also the two daughters of Puddifoot's sister, Grace and Annie Trudon; the three daughters of Roger McKenzie, the town lawyer; little Betty Callender, the only child of old, red-faced Major Callender; Mary and Amy Forrester, daughters of old Admiral Forrester; and, of course, the St. Leath girls.

When Joan arrived, then, in the Deanery dining-room there was a fine gathering. Very unsophisticated they would all have been considered by the present generation. Lady Rose and Lady Mary, who were both of them nearer forty than thirty, had of course had some experience of London, and had been even to Paris and Rome. Of the "Others," at this time, only Betty Callender, who had been born in India, and the Forresters had been farther, in all their lives, than Drymouth. Their lives were bound, and happily bound, by the Polchester horizon. They lived in and for and by the local excitements, talks, croquet, bicycling (under proper guardians.h.i.+p), Rafiel or Buquay or Clinton in the summer, and the occasional (very, very occasional) performances of amateur theatricals in the a.s.sembly Rooms.

Moreover, they were happy and contented and healthy. For many of them _Jane Eyre_ was still a forbidden book and a railway train a remarkable adventure.

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 embarra.s.sment.

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. The trees were faintly purple in the spring sun, daffodils were nodding on the lawn and little gossamer clouds of pale orange floated like feathers across the sky. The large dining-room table was cleared for action, and Gladys Sampson, very serious and important, stood at the far end of the room under a very bad oil-painting of her father, directing operations. The girls were dressed for the most part in white muslin frocks, high in the shoulders and pulled in at the waist and tight round the neck--only the McKenzie girls, who rode to hounds and played tennis beautifully and had, all three of them, faces of glazed red brick, were clad in the heavy Harris tweeds that were just then beginning to be so fas.h.i.+onable.