The Cathedral Part 4

"Oh dear, I really don't know what to do!" said her mother.

It was so seldom that Joan was appealed to for advice that her heart now beat with pride.

"What's the matter, mother?" she asked, trying to look dignified and unconcerned.

Mrs. Brandon looked at her with a frightened and startled look as though she had been speaking to herself and had not wished to be overheard.

"Oh, Joan!...I didn't know that you were there!"

"What's the matter? Is it anything I can help about?"

"'No, dear, nothing...really I didn't know that you were there."

"No, but you must let me help, mother." Joan marvelled at her own boldness as she spoke.

"It's nothing you can do, dear."

"But it's sure to be something I can do. Do you know that I've been home for months and months simply with the idea of helping you, and I'm never allowed to do anything?"

"Really, Joan--I don't think that's quite the way to speak."

"No, but, mother, it's true. I _want_ to help. I'm grown up. I'm going to dinner at the Castle, and I _must_ help you, or--or--I shall go away and earn my own living!"

This last was so startling and fantastic that both Joan and her mother stared at one another in a kind of horrified amazement.

"No, I didn't mean that, of course," Joan said, hurriedly recovering herself. "But you must see that I must have some work to do."

"I don't know what your father would say," said Mrs. Brandon, still bewildered.

"Oh, never mind father," said Joan quickly; "this is a matter just between you and me. I'm here to help you, and you must let me do something. Now, what's the trouble to-day?"

"I don't know, dear. There's no trouble exactly. Things are so difficult just now. The fact is that I promised to go to tea with Miss Burnett this afternoon and now your father wants me to go with him to the Deanery. So provoking! Miss Burnett caught me in the street, where it's always so difficult to think of excuses."

"Let me go to Miss Burnett's instead," said Joan. "It's quite time I took on some of the calling for you. I've never seen Mr. Morris, and I hear he's very nice."

"Very well, dear," said Mrs. Brandon, suddenly beginning, as her way was when there was any real opposition, to capitulate on all sides at once.

"Suppose you do go, dear. I'm sure it's very kind of you. And you might take those books back to the Circulating Library as well. It's Market-Day.

Are you sure you won't mind the horses and cows and dogs?"

Joan laughed. "I believe you think I'm still five years old, mother.

That's splendid. I'll start off after lunch."

Joan went up to her room, elated. Truly, this was a great step forward. It occurred to her on further reflection that something very serious indeed must be going on behind the scenes to cause her mother to give in so quickly. She sat on her old faded rocking-chair, her hands crossed behind her head, thinking it all out. Did she once begin calling on her own account she was grown-up indeed. What would these Morrises be like?

She found now that she was beginning to be a little frightened. Mr. Morris was the new Rector of St. James', the little church over by the cattle market. He had not been in Polchester very long and was said to be a shy timid man, but a good preacher. He was a widower, and his sister-in-law kept house for him. Joan considered further on the great importance of these concessions; it made all the difference to everything. She was now to have a life of her own, and every kind of adventure and romance was possible for her. She was suddenly so happy that she sprang up and did a little dance round her room, a sort of polka, that became so vehement that the pictures and the little rickety table rattled.

"I'll be so grown-up at the Morrises' this afternoon that they'll think I've been calling for years," she said to herself.

She had need of all her courage and optimism at luncheon, for it was a gloomy meal. Only her father and mother were present. They were all very silent.

After lunch she went upstairs, put on her hat and coat, picked up the three Library books, and started off. It was a sunny day, with shadows chasing one another across the Cathedral green. There was, as there so often is in Polchester, a smell of the sea in the air, cold and invigorating. She paused for a moment and looked across at the Cathedral.

She did not know why, but she had been always afraid of the Cathedral. She had never loved it, and had always wished that they could go on Sundays to some little church like St. James'.

For most of her conscious life the Cathedral had hung over her with its dark menacing shadow, forbidding her, as it seemed to her, to be gay or happy or careless. To-day the thought suddenly came to her, "That place is going to do us harm. I hate it," and for a moment she was depressed and uneasy; but when she came out from the Arden Gate and saw the High Street all s.h.i.+ning with the sun, running down the hill into glittering distance, she was gloriously cheerful once more. There the second wonderful thing that day happened to her. She had taken scarcely a step down the hill when she came upon Mrs. Sampson. There was nothing wonderful about that; Mrs.

Sampson, being the wife of a Dean who was much more retiring than he should be, was to be seen in public at all times and seasons, having to do, as it were, the work of two rather than one. No, the wonderful thing was that Joan suddenly realised that her terror of Mrs. Sampson--a terror that had always been a real thorn in her flesh--was completely gone. It was as though a charm, an Abracadabra, had been whispered over Mrs.

Sampson and she had been changed immediately into a rabbit. It had never been Mrs. Sampson's fault that she was alarming to the young. She was a good woman, but she was cursed with two sad burdens--a desperate shyness and a series, unrelenting, unmitigating, mysterious, desperate, of nervous headaches.

Her headaches were a feature of Polchester life, and those who were old enough to understand pitied her and offered her many remedies. But the young cannot be expected to realise that there can be anything physically wrong with the old, and Mrs. Sampson's sharpness of manner, her terrifying habit of rapping out a "Yes" or a "No," her gloomy view of boisterous habits and healthy appet.i.tes, made her one most truly to be avoided.

Before to-day Joan would have willingly walked a mile out of her way to escape her; to-day she only saw a nervous, pale-faced little woman in an ill-fitting blue dress, for whom she could not be anything but sorry.

"Good morning, Mrs. Sampson."

"Good morning, Joan."

"Isn't it a nice day?"

"It's cold, I think. Is your mother well?"

"Very well, thank you."

"Give her my love."

"I will, Mrs. Sampson."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

Mrs. Sampson's nose, that would take on a blue colour on a cold day, quivered, her thin mouth shut with a snap, and she was gone.

"But I wasn't afraid of her!" She was almost frightened at this new spirit that had come to her, and, feeling rather that in another moment she would be punished for her piratical audacity, she turned up the steps into the Circulating Library.

It was the custom in those days that far away from the dust of the grimy shelves, in the very middle of the room, there was a table with all the latest works of fiction in their gaudy bindings, a few volumes of poetry and a few memoirs. Close to this table Miss Milton sat, wrapped, in the warmest weather, in a thick shawl and knitting endless stockings. She hated children, myself in particular. She was also a Sn.o.b of the Sn.o.bs, and thanked G.o.d on her knees every night for Lady St. Leath, Mrs.

Combermere and Mrs. Sampson, by whose graces she was left in her present position.

Joan was still too near childhood to be considered very seriously, and it was well known that her father did not take her very seriously either. She was always, therefore, on the rare occasions when she entered the Library, snubbed by Miss Milton. It must be confessed that to-day, in spite of her success with Mrs. Sampson, she was nervous. She was nervous partly because she hated Miss Milton's red-rimmed eyes, and never looked at them if she could help it, but, in the main, because she knew that her mother was returning the Library books too quickly, and had, moreover, insisted that she should ask for Mr. Barrie's _Sentimental Tommy_ and Mr. Seton Merriman's _The Sowers_, both of them books that had been asked for for weeks and as steadily and persistently refused.

Joan knew what Miss Milton would say, "That they might be in next week, but that she couldn't be sure." Was Joan strong enough now, in her new- found glory, to fight for them? She did not know.

She advanced to the table smiling. Miss Milton did not look up, but continued to knit one of her horrible stockings.

"Good-morning, Miss Milton. Mother has sent back these books. They were not quite what she wanted."

"I'm sorry for that." Miss Milton took the books into her chilblained protection. "It's a little difficult, I must say, to know what Mrs.

Brandon prefers."

"Well, there's _Sentimental Tommy_," began Joan.