The Cathedral. Hugh Walpole
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partly because it was the densest and darkest of all the Arcades, never utterly to be pierced by our youthful eyes, partly because only two doors away were the sinister rooms of Mr. Dawson, the dentist. Here not only was there every kind of toy--dolls, soldiers, horses, carts, games, tops, hoops, dogs, elephants--but also sweets--chocolates, jujubes, caramels, and the best sweet in the whole world, the Polchester Bull's- eye.
They went in together. Mrs. Magnet, now with God, an old woman like a berry, always in a bonnet with green flowers, smiled and bobbed. The colours of the toys jumbled against the dark walls were like patterns in a carpet.
"What do you say, Miss Brandon?" said Johnny. "If I give you a toy will you give me one?"
"Yes," said Joan, afraid a little of Mrs. Magnet's piercing black eye.
"You're not to see what I get. Turn your back a moment."
Joan turned around. As she waited she could hear the "Hie! … Hie! Woah!" of the market-cries, the bleating of the sheep, the lowing of a cow.
"Here you are, then." She turned. He presented her with a Japanese doll, gay in a pink cotton frock, his waist girdled with a sash of gold tissue.
"Now you turn your back," she said.
In a kind of happy desperation she seized a nigger with bold red checks, a white jacket and crimson trousers.
Mrs. Magnet wrapped the presents up. They paid, and walked out into the sun again.
"I'll keep that doll," said Johnny, "just as long as you keep yours."
"Good-bye," said Joan hurriedly. "I've got to call at a house on the other side of the market. … Good-bye."
She felt the pressure of his hand on hers, then, clutching her parcel, hurried, almost ran, indeed, through the market-stalls. She did not look back.
When she had crossed the Square she turned down into a little side street. The plan of Polchester is very simple. It is built, as it were, on the side of a rock, running finally to a flat top, on which is the Cathedral. Down the side of the rock there are broad ledges, and it is on one of these that the market-place is built. At the bottom of the rock lies the jumble of cottages known most erroneously as Seatown, and round the rock runs the river Pol, slipping away at last through woods and hills and valleys into the sea. At high tide you can go all the way by river to the sea, and in the summer, this makes a pleasant and beautiful excursion. It is because of this that Seatown has, perhaps, some right to its name, because in one way and another sailors collect in the cottages and at the "Dog and Pilchard," that pleasant and democratic hostelry of which, in 1897, Samuel Hogg was landlord. Many visitors have been known to declare that Seatown was "too sweet for anything," and that "it would be really wicked to knock down the ducks of cottages," but "the ducks of cottages" were the foulest and most insanitary dwelling-places in the south of England, and it has always been to me amazing that the Polchester Town Council allowed them to stand so long as they did. In 1902, as all the Glebeshire world knows, there was the great battle of Seatown, ending in the cottages' destruction. In 1897 those evil dwelling-places gloried in their full magnificence of sweet corruption, nor did the periodical attacks of typhoid alarm in the least the citizens of the Upper Town. Once and again gentlemen from other parts paid mysterious official visits, but we had ways, in old times, of dealing with inquisitive meddlers from the outside world.
Because the market-place was half-way down the Rock, and because the Rectory of St. James' was just below the market-place, the upper windows of that house commanded a wonderful view both of the hill, High Street and Cathedral above it, and of Seatown, river and woods below it. It was said that it was up this very rocky street from the river, through the market, and up the High Street that the armed enemies of the Black Bishop had fought their way to the Cathedral on that great day when the Bishop had gone to meet his God, and a piece of rock is still shown to innocent visitors as the place whence some of his enemies, in full armour, were flung down, many thousand feet, to the waters of the Pol.
Joan had often longed to see the view from the windows of St. James' Rectory, but she had not known old Dr. Burroughs, the former Rector, a cross man with gout and rheumatism. She walked up some steps and found the house the last of three all squeezed together on the edge of the hill. The Rectory, because it was the last, stood square to all the winds of heaven, and Joan fancied what it must be in wild wintry weather. Soon she was in the drawing-room shaking hands with Miss Burnett, who was Mr. Morris' sister-in-law, and kept house for him.
Miss Burnett was a stout negative woman, whose whole mind was absorbed in the business of housekeeping, prices of food, wickedness and ingratitude of servants, maliciousness of shopkeepers and so on. The house, with all her managing, was neither tidy nor clean, as Joan quickly saw; Miss Burnett was not, by temperament, methodical, nor had she ever received any education. Her mind, so far as a perception of the outside world and its history went, was some way behind that of a Hottentot or a South Sea Islander. She had, from the day of her birth, been told by every one around her that she was stupid, and, after a faint struggle, she had acquiesced in that judgment. She knew that her younger sister, afterwards Mrs. Morris, was pretty and accomplished, and that she would never be either of those things. She was not angry nor jealous at this. The note of her character was acquiescence, and when Agatha had died of pleurisy it had seemed the natural thing for her to come and keep house for the distressed widower. If Mr. Morris had since regretted the arrangement he had, at any rate, never said so.
Miss Burnett's method of conversation was to say something about the weather and then to lapse into a surprised and distressed stare. If her visitor made some statement she crowned it with, "Well, now, that was just was I was going to say."
Her nose, when she talked, twinkled at the nostrils apprehensively, and many of her visitors found this fascinating, so that they suddenly, with hot confusion, realised that they too had been staring in a most offensive manner. Joan had not been out in the world long enough to enable her to save a difficult situation by brilliant talk, and she very quickly found herself staring at Miss Burnett's nose and longing to say something about it, as, for instance, "What a stronge nose you've got, Miss Burnett--see how it twitches!" or, "If you'll allow me, Miss Burnett, I'd just like to study your nose for a minute." When she realised this horrible desire in herself she blushed crimson and gazed about the untidy and entangled drawing-room in real desperation. She could see nothing in the room that was likely to save her. She was about to rise and depart, although she had only been there five minutes, when Mr. Morris came in.
Joan realised at once that this man was quite different from any one whom she had ever known. He was a stranger to her Polchester world in body, soul and spirit, as though, a foreigner from some far-distant country, he had been shipwrecked and cast upon an inhospitable shore. So strangely did she feel this that she was quite surprised when he did not speak with a foreign accent. "Oh, he must be a poet!" was her second thought about Mr. Morris, not because he dressed oddly or had long hair. She could not tell whence the impression came, unless it were in his strange, bewildered, lost blue eyes. Lost, bewildered--yes, that was what he was! With every movement of his slim, straight body, the impulse with which he brushed back his untidy fair hair from his forehead, he seemed like a man only just awake, a man needing care and protection, because he simply would not be able to look after himself. So ridiculously did she have this impression that she almost cried "Look out!" when he moved forward, as though he would certainly knock himself against a chair or a table.
"How strange," she thought, "that this man should live with Miss Burnett! What does he think of her?" She was excited by her discovery of him, but that meant very little, because just now she was being excited by everything. She found at once that talking to him was the easiest thing in the world. Mr. Morris did not say very much; he smiled gently, and when Miss Burnett, awaking suddenly from her torpor, said, "You'll have some tea, Miss Brandon, won't you?" he, smiling, softly repeated the invitation.
"Thank you," said Joan. "I will. How strange it is," she went on, "that you are so close to the market and, even on market-day, you don't hear a sound!"
And it was strange! as though the house were bewitched and had suddenly, even as Joan entered it, gathered around it a dark wood for its protection.
"Yes,"