Читать книгу The Inquisitor - Hugh Walpole - Страница 11

Within a fortnight of his arrival in Polchester Mike Furze had made a friend of almost everyone in the town. Everyone does not, of course, include the Aristocracy, the Cathedral set, the Upper Ten. They were not, as yet, the most of them, aware of his existence. But these were not of the Town. The Town, in fact, resented the airs that the Cathedral assumed. Even Carris and Hattaway, even James Aldridge, the Mayor, who considered themselves part of the Aristocracy, fought the Cathedral whenever there was opportunity of a fight; the lesser men—Bellamy of the stores, young Mr. Bennett the bookseller, Crispangle the W. H. Smith manager, Browning of the St. Leath Hotel, Merton Mellock, pastrycook, Clapton, owner and manager of the Arden and Grand Cinemas—these men, their wives, children and dependants, considered the Dean, the Archdeacon and Mrs. Braund, Lady Mary Bassett, their secret enemies, although they made money out of them whenever possible and bowed, smiled, conversed in the most friendly fashion on all public occasions.

Below these again were the Outlaws, the dominants of Seatown, the riff-raff of 'The Dog and Pilchard,' men and women known well to Leggett, the unemployed, the army of rebels, the descendants of the sea-rovers, the smugglers, the pirates, constant to Polchester for the last thousand years.

Lord and Lady St. Leath, simple, unassuming, generous-hearted, were the only two human beings popular throughout all Polchester.

It was to the Town and not to the Cathedral that Mike Furze became very soon familiar. It was Klitch, the curiosity man, who nicknamed him Boanerges, and the word became universal.

Boanerges was a good fellow when people liked him and things went well with him. His large fat body, his smile and laugh, his loud reverberating voice, his friendliness with everyone, man, woman, child and dog, made him welcome, his stories made him popular. And what stories!

It seemed that there was no part of the world that he did not know, no adventure that had not been his. He had wrestled with lions, strangled gigantic snakes, taken the lead in revolutions, starved in deserts, been wrecked in mid-ocean, defied witch-doctors, been left for dead by savage natives, known Al Capone in Chicago, explored dead cities, navigated unknown rivers.

He was a fearful liar—that was taken for granted. He admitted himself that he had a gift for narrative. But behind the exaggerations there must be truth. To intimates he bared himself and showed the marks of the tiger on his thigh, the tattoo round his middle with which a priest of a Chinese temple had decorated him, the scar on his right leg where a lion had clawed him. All this with the greatest good-nature. You could not call him a conceited man, although he was certainly a boastful. He called himself a failure in life. To Crispangle's young boy, sixteen years of age, a day-boy at Polchester School, he remarked very gravely: 'Take me as a warning, my lad. I've seen the world, but what have I got from it all? A rolling stone gathers no moss. Stick to your job, Ronald, and make your father proud.' But young Ronald thought that moss was a dull uninteresting vegetable and that to be clawed by a lion was worth all the settled jobs in the world.

In spirit Polchester has not changed very greatly since the days of Harmer John. In spite of the motor-coaches that come every day up and down from London, in spite of the garages and the radio and the cinema it is as provincial to-day as it was in 1897.

Bellamy went often to London; Aldridge and Crispangle and Browning had their motor-cars. Their children learnt, twice a week at the Arden, all there was to learn about the splendours of Hollywood, the vice and wickedness of New York and Chicago, the absent-minded melancholy of Garbo, the lovely body of Dietrich, the rough humours of Laurel and Hardy. All these boys could not change the essential separateness of the town, it was a world apart from other worlds, even as it had been when the Black Bishop thundered from the Cathedral altar, Colonel Digby defended its walls against the Roundheads, the young men and maidens gallantly marched out Somerset-wards to be massacred at Sedgemoor.

Therefore Boanerges was an event even as Harmer John had once been. But he did not preach at them as Harmer John had once tried to do and been murdered for his pains. No indeed. Very much the opposite. He had no gospel of Beauty unless you can call jollity and careless adventure, and a drink with the man nearest you a gospel of Beauty. Boanerges was no saint, no hot-gospeller, no preacher of virtue. A liar, a braggart, come from God-knows-where, but good company, a teller of excellent stories (especially when the women were not present), a man who knew the world.

There was, moreover, one element in his situation that was most especially intriguing—that he should be the brother of that miserly, slave-driving old skinflint, Stephen Furze.

Everyone in the town knew the truth about Furze, that he had half Polchester in debt to him, that he drove the wickedest bargains, that he was relentless, that, in his own home, he was so miserly that he was said to live on potato-parings and bread-crusts and force his wife and daughter to do the same.

What a situation, then, that a man like Stephen should have a man like Michael for a brother—the two of them under the same roof!

Further than this, Boanerges himself was a man of an ingenious and diverting curiosity. In his hearty blustering way he asked questions of all his friends and, strangely enough, remembered the answers. There is nothing that man (and woman too) enjoys more thoroughly than a listening friend to whom no small detail is wearisome.

How unique is our history, how apart from all other experience! How fearful was that gastric ulcer, how obstinate our daughter's passion for the worthless young motor expert, how inexplicable the vagaries of one's wife! The tragedy is that we have, all of us, these unique experiences, and listeners are rare. We are all eager to tell, so few of us ready to listen! But Boanerges was ready to listen. He had, as all the town knew, his own wonderful stories and he could talk, without drawing rein, for hours at a time. But also he was ready to sit, his hands on his knees, his pipe in his mouth, his long nose eager and expectant, his stomach comfortably protruding, eager to insert the proper note of surprise, the ingenious question, the grunt of sympathy.

In this way he discovered very quickly a world of private affairs. Bellamy, a little shrewd man of business, declared himself. He was doing all right, very well indeed, but the shop in the High Street was cramped. There was land behind it that would do the trick, but in these depressed times it wasn't wise to venture too far. Mrs. Bellamy wished it, but Mrs. Bellamy was ambitious—socially ambitious. Mrs. Carris made her restless. She was every bit as good as Mrs. Carris. Who, after all, was Mrs. Carris, even though she did give parties every minute of the day and night? He, Bellamy, thought this social business bloody rot—that's what Bellamy thought it. But these women—well, you know what women are. Never satisfied. He gave Mrs. Bellamy everything in reason, but there it was, night after night. . . . She never left him alone. If they'd had a child things might be different. Mrs. Bellamy hadn't occupation enough. . . .

With Crispangle it was another path. He was a large, red-faced fellow, with his secret anxieties. His heart was centred round his boy Ronald—no anxiety there, for the boy was as jolly and healthy a lad as you could find. No, his trouble was Mrs. Crispangle, a pretty little blonde with innocent bright-blue eyes. Mrs. Crispangle, as the whole town knew, liked men. She adored men. Whether there was really anything wrong no one exactly knew. Crispangle himself didn't know. He gave her her liberty. What was a man to do? She would take it just the same whether he gave it her or no, but she liked such worthless rotters! That scoundrel Leggett, Mellock's young waster of a son (she was old enough to be his mother), commercial travellers staying at 'The Bull.' The trouble was that Crispangle loved her, loved her and despised himself for loving her, than which there is no more miserable state. And what an example for his boy! Well, there it was; there was danger hovering over the Crispangle roof, and Crispangle himself, arranging the latest novels in the centre of his shop, decorating his windows with the latest Priestleys and Galsworthys (his eye on the classical decoration of Bennett's bookshop opposite), would wish sometimes that he had the courage to put his head in a gas-oven, that he did not love Mrs. Crispangle any more, that he might escape with his boy to the South Sea Islands and drink his fill to the tinkle of the ukelele.

Yes, Boanerges learnt many things—of the excellent energy but unhappy sensitiveness of the Dean, of how sadly henpecked the Archdeacon was, of the greed and wisdom of Ronder, of the goodness and decency of Canon Dale, of the penniless condition of the Marlowes, the airs and affectation of Browning of the St. Leath Hotel, the brilliance and haughtiness of Hattaway, the hideous sculpture of Lampiron, the learning and wisdom of Bishop Kendon at Carpledon.

He learnt these things and many more. But especially he learnt the surprising power of his brother Stephen in the town. Rumour, as usual, exaggerated, no doubt, but in the fifteen years of his residence here Stephen Furze had become money-lender-in-chief in Polchester. His clients ranged, it appeared, from poor old dreamers like Marlowe and gentlemen like Lampiron to any wastrel at the bottom of the town. He did not care where he fixed his talons, but once he had his grip he did not let go. Boanerges was surprised at the hatred with which his brother was regarded. He was almost a legendary figure; it was said that he had been seen in two different places at the same time. His manner of walking, quickly, silently, his long nose pointing the way, his soft and gentle politeness (he was not obsequious), the stories of his wealth (he was made into the exaggerated villain of the miser legend, boxes of gold pieces under his bed, stockings of specie up the chimney, and the rest), the tales of his relentless iron-gloved firmness—all this Boanerges learnt and wondered at.

For he was compelled to confess that his first fortnight under his brother's roof had revealed him as anything but a figure of melodrama. It is true that the food was sparse, the house bare and cold, the atmosphere far from gay, but Stephen himself was quiet, decorous and, in his own fashion, friendly. The truth is that Boanerges at first saw but little of him. After his breakfast he took his walk; he had his midday meal at 'The Bull'; in the afternoon he often attended Evensong, looked in for a chat with his friend Mr. Klitch, watched a game of football; he supped at 'The Bull,' played a game of billiards, talked with his friends. He knew that it would not always be thus; his fifty pounds could not last for ever.

He was determined, however, to remain in Polchester. No place had ever suited him so exactly; he had friends here and the Cathedral: something in the character of the little place appealed to the childish simplicity of his character. He would, perhaps, have children, settle down. He might one day be Town Councillor or even Mayor. Who could tell?

Then he discovered a queer thing. Something drew him back to the house. He found that he would return to it, during the daytime, for no reason at all. He would be talking to some friends in 'The Bull,' happy, contented, telling the tale or listening to some pleasant little urban scandal, and suddenly he would laugh, nod, say 'Cheerio' and turn homewards. He would let himself in, stand in the hall and wonder why he had come. He would listen, sniff the dry antiseptic air. The house would be as still as the grave. It might be that everyone was out and then he would walk stealthily, almost on tip-toe, from empty room to empty room. There was nothing to see, nothing to find. His brother's room was orderly—a roll-top desk, a green-and-white safe, a table with some neglected books, a large fern in a blue pot in the window, some chairs. The roll-top desk was locked. The room was dusty because no one was permitted to touch anything there. A big cabinet with drawers was also locked. And yet the room was not dead. Some life haunted it, and Mike felt that he was watched. One window looked over the Rock down to Seatown, the other to a confusion of climbing roofs and the Cathedral. Heavy curtains of a faded brown hung on either side of the windows, and it was a trick of Michael's, when he had made sure that his brother was not there, to look behind these curtains. He did not know why he did so. Sometimes Stephen was there. Mike would knock and enter. His brother would look up from his desk and smile.

'Yes—what is it?' he would ask gently.

Mike would apologize and withdraw. It was a fact that this room drew him with increased fascination. It must be here that Stephen kept all his secrets—in the safe, the roll-top desk, the locked drawers. He did all the work himself. He possessed no secretary or clerk. 'Perhaps, in a little while,' Mike thought, 'I can persuade him to let me help him. He must need someone. He can pay me a small wage.' And at that thought he would smile angrily to himself, for he realized that Stephen would never pay anyone anything. Mike was beginning to understand what this lust might be. He was even himself sharing in it. No one could live in that house and not share in it. Mike began, out of sheer devilment, to play a game. When he was sitting talking with his brother he would, as though absent-mindedly, first jingle the loose coin in his pocket, then he would take a penny, a sixpence, a two-shilling piece in his hand, shake them together, look at them, lay them on the table in front of him. While he did this he would laugh cheerily but look, out of the corner of his eye, at his brother. He saw the long thin body stiffen. Stephen had a prominent Adam's-apple, and this now seemed to swell like a live captured thing in his throat. It was as though it would burst the dry skin in its efforts to escape. The eyes would brighten, the long nose deaden at the tip. Then the hands would come out, would move forward, the fingers spreading, each long bony finger with a life of its own. The hands would rise, would catch the lapels of his coat, or descend slowly to the table, or close with spasmodic twitching. Then the whole body would bend forward and the sharp eyes fasten on the coin. All this would be subconscious, the inner self rising and dominating the external self which still smiled and spoke like an automaton.

Mike knew well how men will, without realizing it, watch a woman pass in the street, will continue their conversation, go about their business—but their real self is completely driven and dominated by the desire for this woman's form. The woman vanishes; with a sigh of frustration the real self sinks, as an animal cheated of its desire, subsides again into the muddy depths of the stream. That was a lust that Mike knew and recognized. This was kindred with it as all lusts are kindred. He would pick up the coins and replace them in his pocket.

But, in playing this game, he himself began to be caught. Sometimes, when he was alone, he would take coins from his pocket and examine them, turn them over, study their dates. He parted from them reluctantly. Some of them were of recent date, fresh and shining and the image of the King sharp and brilliant. At night, when undressing, he would pile the coins in a little heap on the table and gaze at them.

What a fortune Stephen must possess! Mike began to share the general superstition and to fancy that there must somewhere be boxes packed with bright and shining coin. His curiosity began to stir also around Stephen's clients. How did he deal with them? How did he behave when they asked for time or some remission of sentence? How were that smile and that gentle voice?

On one smoky autumn afternoon he had a brief interesting contact with one of Stephen's visitors. The Cathedral had struck three. He was standing in the hall when in great haste Lampiron the sculptor came down the stairs.

What had occurred?

About two-thirty on that afternoon Lampiron had rung the bell and Sarah Furze had admitted him.

'Is Mr. Furze at home?' he had asked.

'I will find out.'

The blind woman, as always, touched him deeply. He was touched, as he knew, too easily by pitiful things, doing often enough nothing about them, for what can an artist do?—and then doing, suddenly, too much, foolish, extravagant things beyond his means. He followed her into the house, standing four-square there on his stout legs, his head back, as though already on his guard against his enemy—for Furze was his enemy as he well knew.

She moved in darkness but with certainty, and he thought—how awful to be blind, to see beautiful things no more, the moon rising in a clear sky, the clean, smooth petal of a flower, the white resilience of a stone waiting to be carved. She was imprisoned in this horrible house as in a grave. He never entered it but he wanted instantly to leave it again, and his impatience which, old as he was, he had not yet learnt to command, drove him even now although he knew that he must not leave this place until he had got what he wanted. The thought of how serious things were made his heart hammer under his double-breasted blue jacket. No one would know how nervous he was; he looked like a sea-captain standing, his legs spread, his hands behind his back, as though in command of his ship and telling anyone to go to hell, but that was not at all how he felt. He took out a large silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead. His hat dropped to the floor and he bent to pick it up. How he hated to feel this fear, but there was something about this man of which he was deeply afraid. The man had no bowels. He was a devil, and it would be kindness to everyone to knock him on the head and bury him.

Sarah Furze returned. She came down the stairs with her hand against the faded yellow wallpaper. At the bottom of the stairs she stopped and said: 'Please come up, Mr. Lampiron.'

When he was in the room he stared defiantly from under his thick black eyebrows at the man at his desk. He knew that defiance was the last thing that he should show. He had come to placate the man, to ask a great favour, to beg him to be merciful. But he could not beg of any man nor pretend to be what he was not.

Stephen Furze was most agreeable. He asked Lampiron to sit down near to him. He looked at him most friendlily—for why should he not? This broad, strong, thick-set man with the fine black head of hair, the strong shoulders, the grand body for a man of his age, could crush him, Stephen Furze, with one hand—and yet it was Stephen Furze, who had no bodily strength at all, would do the crushing!

'I'm glad to see you, Mr. Lampiron. What can I do for you?'

Lampiron plunged at once into the matter. He would waste no time, but would get away from this beastly house as soon as might be. He was never very good at explaining things: he had not at all an orderly mind. However, what he wanted to say was clear enough. He pulled a rather shabby little note-book from his deep pocket, found a piece of paper on which he had made calculations. On January 3rd, 1928, Furze had lent him, on certain terms, one hundred pounds. On June 5th, 1930, Furze had lent him two hundred pounds. Three hundred pounds in all. At various dates he, Lampiron, had paid Furze certain sums. In all he had paid Furze three hundred and twenty pounds. Nevertheless, as he understood it, he still owed Furze one hundred and thirty-five pounds, part of which must be paid at the very latest three weeks from that present date. He was afraid that, owing to unforeseen circumstances, he would be unable to pay anything on that date. He wished to point out that he had already paid Furze more than his original debt. He wondered—and here, in spite of himself, he stammered a little—whether Furze might not see his way to excuse him the rest of this debt or, at any rate, to postpone the payment until times would be better with him. Times, as Furze undoubtedly knew, had not, during the last few years, been good for artists. He was finishing a piece of sculpture which he had every hope of selling in London.

If in three weeks' time Furze insisted on payment he would be forced into bankruptcy, which would seem to him an intolerable disgrace. He would have to leave the town, and, at his age, that would be for him a great tragedy. Indeed, he did not think that he could easily begin life again anywhere else. He hoped that Furze, in consideration of all the circumstances . . .

It had been terrible for him to have to say all this—as though he had been forced to strip himself naked—but, as he spoke, although he knew the nature of his opponent, he could not help but put himself in the other man's place. If someone had come to him thus how gladly he would have said: 'Why, of course, old chap, wait until times are better for you. . . .' He could hear his own voice uttering these words, and, as he ended, he looked up with a broad smile and felt as though his cause were won.

Stephen smiled too and, very genially, said: 'Wait one moment, Mr. Lampiron. I'll see how we stand.'

And Lampiron said: 'Yes, that's right. I think you'll find the figures correct, though.'

Furze opened a drawer of his roll-top desk and produced therefrom neat bundles of papers tied with pink tape. He also found a big black-covered ledger. He turned his back to Lampiron, bending over his desk and considering the papers.

Lampiron looked at that back and considered how, were clothes absent, he would be staring now at a long knotted spine-bone, very prominent as a cord holding together that thin grey-white body. That spine-bone would be curved and the curve would suggest that, with strong fingers, it might be snapped. And Lampiron saw Furze, bending forward as though he were bare to the waist. The grey-white spine-bone, knobbled and bent, offered itself to his strong hands. . . . He choked; he coughed; he put his hands to his throat. He reflected that he had recently read somewhere that there was such a thing as reality and that it was the writer's business to deal only with that. As soon as his critical readers beheld the writer abandoning reality they sighed for him and were ashamed. They would be ashamed now, thought Lampiron. This is not real. And yet this is real—this dusty room and Furze's spine-bone, grey in colour, knobbled and bent, that I wish to snap with my hands. . . . I do wish it. I should like to see him fall to the floor, broken, lifeless, nothing. . . .

'You see, Mr. Lampiron,' Furze having swung round in his chair towards him was saying, 'business is business. I know well how you feel about it. We all know that artists are not the best business men. No one sympathizes with them in that more than I do. But looking at my papers I find that everything is perfectly in order. You wrote your signature to these arrangements realizing fully what they involved. . . .'

Lampiron stared at Furze as though by so staring he would turn him into thin grey paper which he then could tear at will. But what he was really thinking was: How have I got myself into this mess? How is it that I have any relations with that swine? I was a decent fellow once and safe and no one could have any power over me.

And he thought of a studio that he had had on the river—Putney—the water flowing swiftly with little friendly encouraging slaps against his garden-wall, and the smell of mown hay from some neighbouring field, the omnibuses going over the bridge, and an old aunt, alive then, having tea in his studio, saying, 'I never can resist gingerbread.' It had been all right then. It was all wrong now.

He heard Furze say:

'I'm afraid these things are not altogether in my own hands, Mr. Lampiron. And on the whole I think you will agree that I have always tried to meet you. In difficult times like these it is not easy to find someone as accommodating as I have been——'

Anger was rising in Lampiron's breast and he knew that it must not. But the same exhalation rising from it dried his throat, and his voice was hoarse when he said:

'I've paid you my debt and more.'

'Yes, that is perfectly true. But it is I that have been forced to take the risks. I lent you the money on no security whatever.'

'You had security. You knew that I was here, that I would not run away——'

'Well—no. Everyone in the town knows that you are a man of honour, Mr. Lampiron. And that is why—if you will allow me to be perfectly frank—I am a little surprised that you should be unable to meet the obligation in three weeks' time. It is a matter of—let me see'—he consulted his papers—'forty-three pounds, seven and sixpence—and then, after that, only two more payments.'

Lampiron could beg of no man, but, that he might silence the restive growling monster—so familiar to him, so dangerous, the creature that, chain it as he might, seemed, when it wished, to break any chain—he began to attempt conciliation:

'You see, Mr. Furze,' he said, 'I'm not young any more. It would be quite different if I were. Rightly or wrongly I've dropped popular art and am trying to make something that I can believe in. Sculpture takes time and is expensive. You have to get the material long before you see any financial return. I don't want much. I live very simply, I assure you. Give me some time. I can't work properly if I'm harassed by money worries. Let me work and I'll pay off the whole debt—by God I will—and I'll take care not to get into the hands of a miserly swine——' He stopped short. The words had come of themselves. It was not he that had said them. Again his cursed lack of control! He rose to his feet, his hands trembling, dismay in his heart, for he knew now that he had ruined everything.

Furze looked at him.

'Well, Mr. Lampiron,' he said. 'After that——'

And that look from those half-lidded eyes ended the matter.

Lampiron moved forward. His hand shot out and caught Furze's shoulder. 'And that's what you are. Doesn't the whole town know it? Someone will be ridding the place of you one day, and a fine thing too. . . .' He turned. He was choking with his cursed temper that was always ruining his chances. . . . He saw that that beef-faced little stable-jockey, Leggett, was standing just inside the doorway.

He stormed at both of them: 'Have me up for assault and battery, the pair of you, and go to hell where you both belong. . . .' He banged the door behind him, tumbled down the stairs almost into Michael Furze's arms—and so out of the house.

When the hall-door was closed silence settled on the house again. Mike Furze thought—Fancy that now! Lampiron was in a fine temper about something! My dear brother has been tiresome. Or perhaps it was that Leggett, who only five minutes ago had gone upstairs as though he had known that he would be wanted. There was a mutual dislike between Mike and Leggett. Leggett behaved as though Mike did not exist, barely spoke to him. He regarded Mike, naturally enough, as an interloper. Mike could understand that. But what did he need to be so superior for? He was nothing to look at with his bald head and unhealthy red-and-white complexion and thin mouth. He looked as though he should be standing, sucking a straw, outside a stable. But he talked as though he were the best-educated man in the world, quoting French books and claiming to be an authority on everything. . . . No morals either—no woman safe from him.

Mike, looking up the stairs, wondered what those two would be discussing now. Planning some devilry no doubt. He'd find out some of their secrets. He'd have Mr. Leggett at his feet before he was done. Now that he was in the house they'd find it no easy matter to get him out of it again! He might make a friend of Lampiron, discover what his trouble was. There were a thousand things he could do!

Then he heard steps and he saw coming down the stairs his niece Elizabeth, dressed for going out. He did not understand that girl. He had, as yet, achieved no relationship with her at all. She was reserved, that was what she was. Did not seem to want to have anything to do with anybody. And yet he could not say that he disliked her. She was plain but she had dignity. It occurred to him suddenly that she must know about many things. It was certain that she shared some of her father's secrets and he thought that he would make friends with her. He liked her; he admired her. She had a dull time of it, poor girl.

'Going out, Elizabeth?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said.

Her clothes were shabby but neat. He thought that she mightn't look so bad if she were well dressed—a little colour to her cheeks. She had a fine figure, good eyes. She carried herself well. Her voice was soft in tone.

'May I come with you a little way? I'm going up into the town myself. . . . I'll get my hat and coat.'

So they went out together into a town veiled in smoky haze. The sky above their heads had an undertone of red fire, felt rather than seen. The Market-place and the High Street were full of life, cars coming and going, people shopping, dogs barking, and there was a pleasant frosty nip in the air, a scent of the sea; the Cathedral bells had been ringing for Evensong. Now they had ceased, but the echo of their tune seemed to linger in the air. Mike talked, making himself agreeable.

'You know, Elizabeth, I'm a little afraid of you. I fancy you find me an encumbrance. I'm sorry for that because I would like us to be friends.'

She looked straight in front of her.

'You mustn't think that,' she said. 'I don't make friends easily.'

'I've noticed that and I think it's a pity. You seem to have an awfully dull time. You stay in the house too much. Why not come out with me once and again? I'm not such a bad old stick once you know me.'

'There's a lot to do at home. Mother can't do very much. We can't afford a servant. Only Mrs. Wilson coming in twice a week.'

'But that's absurd,' he said eagerly. 'Your father's one of the richest men in the town.'

'We like it better—not to have a stranger in the house living with us.'

'But now that I'm staying with you it means extra work.'

She turned towards him and smiled.

'You don't give us much extra work, Uncle Michael.'

'Well, I'm glad you think so. All the same——'

They were walking up the High Street now and Michael found friends all the way. He called out to one, waved his hand to another. Mrs. Braund, in her car, passed slowly up the hill.

'Let's go into the Cathedral for a moment,' he said.

'Service will be going on.'

'We can sit in the back of the nave for a little while.'

She did not dissent and they passed under Arden Gate into the Precincts.

As he pushed the heavy door with his hand and stepped in he felt his expected thrill; it did not lessen with custom but rather increased. It was a thrill both of excited expectation and of some sort of gratified vanity. He must be an unusual fellow to feel thus about a cathedral. Bellamy and Aldridge and Crispangle never bothered their heads about the Cathedral save on state occasions. He had spoken to Crispangle about the way he felt, and Crispangle had said that he didn't look like a chap who would go batty, but you never could tell. There'd been a painter chap once—Davray was his name—before the War, and that Swede, Harmer John, and there was old Mr. Mordaunt now who was always drawing. You could see him sitting in the Precincts in every kind of weather. What was there in the Cathedral after all? Of course it didn't serve him too badly. Books about the Cathedral were the soundest stock he had. They sold all the year round. And of course the Cathedral did bring tourists to the town, but for his part all it did for the people who lived in the place was to start a lot of snobs turning up their noses at the real people who made the town what it was. What purpose did the Cathedral serve any more? Nobody went to the services unless perhaps young Canon Dale was preaching—but the place was dead, anyone could see how dead it was!

But it wasn't dead for Michael Furze! Now, as he sat down quietly with Elizabeth on a little chair at the end of the nave, it seemed to him tingling with life. The nave itself was lit with electric light. The choir, hidden now from their view, threw up the misted light of its candles. Dimly the service came through to them. Someone was reading a lesson. The vast nave was deserted save for two isolated figures, seated at the very front under the round carved pulpit to the right. Mike knew by this time much of the Cathedral's history and, leaning forward, his elbows planted on his knees, it seemed to him that figures were still, after these many hundred years, busied about their daily work. The monks were singing: 'Under the shadow of Thy wings, O Lord, protect us,' the seventh service of the day, Vespers followed by Compline. There were the Pilgrimages. The pilgrims were crowding there listening to the last service. Many of them had walked all the way from London, taking weeks on their journey. They still showed you at 'The Bull' one of the walls that had belonged to a great Pilgrim Dormitory containing one hundred and fifty beds. Now they would be looking about them, the painted glass of the windows glowing in the faint candlelight. They had visited all the Cathedral sights, but especially the Black Bishop's Tomb. They had waited. Then the silver bells sounded and the canopy was raised and the Shrine with the Black Bishop's relics revealed. . . .

He wondered what the girl beside him was thinking. She too was leaning forward, her long legs drawn up, her head cupped in her hands. He stole furtive glances at her; he felt kindly, protective. The Cathedral made him a little mad, heady and irresponsible. Other things in other places had excited him thus, and when such a mood was on him he wanted to shout, to throw his body about, to make love, to force a fight on someone, to make a disturbance—children, when they are excited, feel like this and their elders rebuke them. When the elders themselves yield to such a temptation it leads often enough to the lock-up. Boanerges had been locked up, and more often than once. When he was excited he could be either murderous or generous. Now he felt generous, with the pillars rising into darkness like trees in a forest. The choir was singing the anthem, and the organ beat into the stones, transmuting them, and the beat changed to a liquid rhythm as though fire ran on the wall and tongues of flame licked the pillars. The anthem died away. A voice recited prayers. Then the organ began again, but very slowly, like a wind that blows petals from the orchard trees, the curtains were drawn back, and before a shimmering dance of candlelight the choir moved down the steps and away into the darkness.

Then he was surprised: he looked at his niece and saw that she was crying. . . .

He had always prided himself on his wonderful social tact, and especially with women. He was in fact not subtle enough to be tactful, nor had he that natural instinct towards good manners that makes up for subtlety. His theory about himself was that he knew in every situation exactly how to behave with women. He believed further that when he wished to be socially attractive no woman could resist him. When women did resist him, as was quite often the case, he persuaded himself that it was because he had not been really interested. Now he felt most kindly towards Elizabeth, so he thought that he would leave her alone for a little. He whispered: 'I won't be five minutes. Just going to look at something.' The nave had sprung to life. Some visitors who had attended Evensong were moving about. Several had seated themselves to listen to the last notes of the organ.

Broad, the verger, came majestically down the centre of the nave. Broad was one of the many friends that Mike Furze had made in Polchester. White-haired, stout and most majestical, he had been verger here only ten years, successor to young Lawrence, old Lawrence's son, but you would suppose that the Cathedral owed its very existence to him. He was a man whose majesty was only equalled by his self-confidence, his nice sense of social distinctions, his tyranny towards obsequious persons, and his real passion for forms and ceremonies.

He was a good man and kind to his small round wife, his girl and his boy when he had time to attend to them. But the Cathedral was his life; he existed in only a faint half-hearted way when absent from it.

'Would you let me up into King Harry for a moment, Broad?' Mike asked him.

'It's after hours, you know, Mr. Furze.'

'I know, but I won't be five minutes.'

'Here's the key, sir. I'll be waiting for you.'

Mike took the key, crossed the nave, passed up a side aisle until he reached King Henry's Chapel. This was on the right of the choir, and on the delicate screen that defended its privacy there hung a notice saying that this chapel was dedicated to private worship and meditation. It was hoped that no one would disturb any private worshipper. Mike reverently crossed the flagged floor; he felt the quiet of the little place, the intimacy of the group of chairs, the dark purple and gold of the altar-cloth, the two silver vases containing bronze chrysanthemums, and above the altar the sixteenth-century painting in dark red and green of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. All the colours here were faint in the dusky twilight of the great church.

At the corner of the chapel Mike found a little wooden door. He started up through black darkness, his fat body having bare room between the thick stone walls. Half-way up he stopped and listened. He was now in utter darkness; the silence was part of the darkness. He wondered what sudden impulse it was that had made him come. When he had seen Elizabeth's tears he had said to himself: 'I must get away. I'll go up King Harry.' But why? Now, pausing in that chill and dumb blackness, some sort of foreboding seized him. That was not unusual. He was full of forebodings, the child of superstition. He would not walk under ladders, nor look at the moon through glass, nor sit down thirteen at table. He counted blocks of pavement as he walked, and lamp-posts and the numbers of houses. A fortune-teller in Mexico had warned him that the seventh, the fifteenth, the twenty-ninth and the forty-seventh years of his life would be his dangerous years.

It was true that he had had scarlet fever when he was seven, been bitten by a dog when he was fifteen, abominably treated by a Spanish lady when he was twenty-nine. He would be forty-seven next year. And now he wanted to go back. He was afraid of something, the dark perhaps. A whisper, as though from the stone walls, seemed to tell him that this was a bad place for him. He was so superstitious that he was capable of imagining that it was the Cathedral itself that was warning him. However, he went on. There was a glimmer, then a grey shining of light, then, with relief, he stepped up on to what was known as the Whispering Gallery.

This was a railed platform that ran above the King Henry Chapel and then on, above the nave, to the opposite tower. Mike went on and up, knocking his knees against the little winding stone stair, sometimes in darkness, then benefited by the dim light of a narrow window, then in darkness again. At last he came to a square, empty little room with a wooden floor. One side of this room had no wall but was open and strongly railed in. Here visitors, having paid their shilling, paused on their long journey to the top of the Tower, leaned on the rail and looked over—a dizzy sight, down, down, into a great depth that shone mistily, that was the nave. Out of the nave, up into heaven, soared the buttresses and pillars. Here you could realize the proud and contemptuous life of the Cathedral; at such a height man was nought, and the life of the great building, stirring, never still, was the true life of undying beauty. The lines and curves, so strong and yet so delicate, formed a beauty that man could not destroy, for he might pull down stone upon stone, scatter the fabric into space, and yet the building would be there, immutable, indestructible, stronger than material man, having kinship only with the spirit.

Looking down, Mike could see points of light, specks of gold on St. Margaret's screen, the brass of the Black Bishop's Tomb, the gold of the figures on the great white reredos.

He turned and walked across to the thin slit of a deeply-bedded window in the further wall. Through this the cold evening air beat upon his face. He was now a great height up and, were it full daylight, he would be able to see Polchester stretched like a pattern in a rug below him, on all sides of it the chequered shape of fields and, on a clear day, the sparkling band of sea.

The little room itself was very dark, and he must be careful to avoid the space where the wooden flooring failed to cover a big drop against the wall. In the daytime he had noticed this and wondered why no one had extended the wooden flooring. The drop must be some twelve feet at least, and, peering over, looking down into dust and fragments of paper, he had thought that here would be a good place for someone to be hid or to conceal a treasure. For, even on the brightest day, this corner under the wall was obscure and you could not see what lay there. The hollow must be part of the stone pillar that had, for some purpose, once been cut away.

So now very carefully he avoided the place where he knew it to be, found the stair and cautiously climbed down. Why had he come? But why did he do so many things without reason? Perhaps there was a reason after all. He was not, he complacently reminded himself, like other men.

Elizabeth Furze, meanwhile, knew why he had gone. He had seen that she was crying. She was ashamed and wiped her eyes with her thin glove. It was not often that she cried, but to-day her loneliness, her ignominy, her isolation had swept upon her, carried with the music, the majesty of the dimly-lit building, and the attempts at some sort of clumsy kindness on the part of her uncle. She was not a weak or a sentimental woman. She had long ago faced her destiny, which was to be the plain unwanted daughter of a man detested by all mankind. Had it not been for her mother she would long ago have left the town where she was so hatefully conspicuous—but, as she could not leave it, she had set her countenance, with cold hostile resolution, to show them all that she too was proud and would surrender her will to no one.

She refused all offers of friendship because she was sure that these must be prompted by pity. Only sometimes in her lonely walks she would talk to a child, give it some pennies or ask it questions about its life, its home, its pleasures. This was one of her two sources of happiness—she discovered that children were not frightened of her but liked to be with her. The other was her love of this place, the town, the Cathedral, the country round it. Especially the country, and when she was standing on the high ground above the Pol, saw the wind bowing the corn, or the rich colour of the newly-turned earth upon whose surface, maybe, the sea-gulls had gathered—then she would draw a deep breath and smell the soil and the sea, rain in the air, sun-scents in leaves, and forget, for a time, the imprisoning shame of the house where she lived.

She had become, in these years, almost fantastically self-conscious. She imagined that with every step that she took people watched her and whispered about her father. She could have forgiven him, however, this and other worse things. One thing she would never forgive him. Because of his miserliness her mother was blind. An operation would have saved her, and her father had refused the cost of it. Her mother said nothing. She did not complain. She showed no emotion of any kind. Whether she cared for her daughter at all Elizabeth did not know, but, on her side, Elizabeth loved her passionately, perhaps because she had no one else to love.

But, above all, the centre of her character was stern. Not only circumstances had made her so. The tears that she had shed now had been forced from her by a sudden realization of a beauty, nobler and more eloquent, than any in which she herself could share. Because of her isolation she had wept, but at once her pride returned, doubly fortified, and rebuked her weakness.

She got up from her chair and moved quietly about the great church. She stopped in front of the window near the King's Chapel—'The Virgin and the Children.'

It was for these windows that she came most often to the Cathedral. She knew every figure, every detail by heart.

In one of the Cathedral Guides they are thus described:

'In the window on the extreme right the Virgin Mary in a purple gown bends down over a field of lilies to watch the infant Christ at play. Next to it, the Christ and St. John paddle in a stream bordered by thick grasses, while the Virgin watches them from the window of a crooked house set in a cup of purple hill. In the centre window children are running in a crowd after a white kid, and the Virgin Mary holds back her Son, Who stretches out His arm after His playmates. In the lower half Joseph is in his workshop. Jesus, seated on the floor, looks up at him while the Virgin, in a dress of vivid green, stands near Him, guarding Him. In the third window, on the left, they are walking, father, mother and Son, up the steps of the Temple, watched by a group of grave old men. In the lower panel Jesus is playing at His mother's feet, while an ox, an ass, and three dogs seem to be protecting Him.'

She could see it now only faintly, but knew every aspect of it so well that light was not necessary for her.

She was startled because someone spoke to her.

'Are not these windows of the Virgin and the Children beautiful?'

She was startled; it was so rare that anyone spoke to her. She turned and saw that it was a little clergyman. There was something about him so simple and inoffensive that she could not be offended.

'Yes,' she said. 'But the light is bad now. You should see it in the daytime.'

'There are so many things in the Cathedral,' he said. 'It will take a long time to know them all. But even in this light the colours are lovely. I'm glad I'm living here. I can come often.'

She wanted to move away now that she knew that he lived in Polchester. It was only because the light was dim that he had spoken to her, not seeing who she was.

But he could see her clearly. The light above the King's Chapel illuminated her. He looked at her and thought that she had a fine strong face. There was something reserved and independent that he admired.

'Do you live here too?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said shortly.

'I hope you won't think me impertinent, but I'm the new curate at St. Paul's, the church at the top of Orange Street. I have just been attending Evensong. What a beautiful service, and how strange that there should be so few people present.'

'Many people in Polchester have never been inside the Cathedral—and never will be.'

'Really? Is that so?' He looked at her with a smile, and in spite of herself she smiled back at him.

'Good evening,' he said, and went away.

Directly afterwards her uncle joined her and they went out of the church.

'Look here,' he said, when they were outside, 'would you like to see something very beautiful, Elizabeth? It's only a step away.'

She walked beside him across the Green. They went into Klitch's shop. She drew back as she entered, hating to be looked at by Mr. Klitch. When they were gone he would say: 'Do you know who I had in my shop this evening? Furze's daughter The old scoundrel starves her, I'll be bound. She hasn't a penny to clothe herself with. . . .' Oh, she knew well enough!

Her uncle was very jolly with Klitch. He talked to him as though he had known him all his life.

'Come on, Klitch, let's see it! I'll be buying it back from you next week. Anyone tried to take it from you?'

Then Elizabeth Furze saw something very lovely—a black marble crucifix.

Klitch placed it on a table, and it stood in all its separate dignity and beauty, remote and apart from the gilt chairs, the carved tables, the needlework of green and purple, boxes with coloured pictures, and high mirrors with gold leaves and flowers. It stood apart. The Figure suffered and was triumphant.

'Come on, Klitch, who's been trying to buy it from you?'

'It's been much admired, Mr. Furze, I can tell you. An American gentleman was enquiring. I'll be sorry to see it go.'

'If anyone robs me of it I'll break his neck,' Mike said.

He touched it, bade Elizabeth come close to it.

'Ever see anything like that? I'll say you haven't.'

Klitch smiled and was very friendly.

'That's mine,' Mike Furze said as they walked out of the dusk into the lighted town. 'I wouldn't lose it for a million.'

'It's very beautiful,' said Elizabeth.