The Cathedral | Page 8

any more."
Falk turned and went.
The Archdeacon, as he stood there, felt a dim mysterious pain as though an adversary whom he completely despised had found suddenly with his weapon a joint in his armour.

Chapter II
Ronders

The train that brought Falk Brandon back to Polchester brought also the Ronders--Frederick Ronder, newly Canon of Polchester, and his aunt, Miss Alice Ronder. About them the station gathered in a black cloud, dirty, obscure, lit by flashes of light and flame, shaken with screams, rumblings, the crashing of carriage against carriage, the rattle of cab- wheels on the cobbles outside. To-day also there was the hiss and scatter of the rain upon the glass roof. The Ronders stood, not bewildered, for that they never were, but thinking what would be best. The new Canon was a round man, round-shouldered, round-faced, round-stomached, round legged. A fair height, he was not ludicrous, but it seemed that if you laid him down he would roll naturally, still smiling, to the farthest end of the station. He wore large, very round spectacles. His black clerical coat and trousers and hat were scrupulously clean and smartly cut. He was not a dandy, but he was not shabby. He smiled a great deal, not nervously as curates are supposed to smile, not effusively, but simply with geniality. His aunt was a contrast, thin, straight, stiff white collar, little black bow-tie, coat like a man's, skirt with no nonsense about it. No nonsense about her anywhere. She was not unamiable, perhaps, but business came first.
"Well, what do we do?" he asked.
"We collect our bags and find the cab," she answered briskly.
They found their bags, and there were a great many of them; Miss Ronder, having seen that they were all there and that there was no nonsense about the porter, moved off to the barrier followed by her nephew.
As they came into the station square, all smelling of hay and the rain, the deluge slowly withdrew its forces, recalling them gradually so that the drops whispered now, patter-patter--pit-pat. A pigeon hovered down and pecked at the cobbles. Faint colour threaded the thick blotting-paper grey.
Old Fawcett himself had come to the station to meet them. Why had he felt it to be an occasion? God only knows. A new Canon was nothing to him. He very seldom now, being over eighty, with a strange "wormy" pain in his left ear, took his horses out himself. He saved his money and counted it over by his fireside to see that his old woman didn't get any of it. He hated his old woman, and in a vaguely superstitious, thoroughly Glebeshire fashion half-believed that she had cast a spell over him and was really responsible for his "wormy" ear.
Why had he come? He didn't himself know. Perhaps Ronder was going to be of importance in the place, he had come from London and they all had money in London. He licked his purple protruding lips greedily as he saw the generous man. Yes, kindly and generous he looked....
They got into the musty cab and rattled away over the cobbles.
"I hope Mrs. Clay got the telegram all right." Miss Ronder's thin bosom was a little agitated beneath its white waistcoat. "You'll never forgive me if things aren't looking as though we'd lived in the place for months."
Alice Ronder was over sixty and as active as a woman of forty. Ronder looked at her and laughed.
"Never forgive you! What words! Do I ever cherish grievances? Never... but I do like to be comfortable."
"Well, everything was all right a week ago. I've slaved at the place, as you know, and Mrs. Clay's a jewel--but she complains of the Polchester maids--says there isn't one that's any good. Oh, I want my tea, I want my tea!"
They were climbing up from the market-place into the High Street. Ronder looked about him with genial curiosity.
"Very nice," he said; "I believe I can be comfortable here."
"If you aren't comfortable you certainly won't stay," she answered him sharply.
"Then I must be comfortable," he replied, laughing.
He laughed a great deal, but absent-mindedly, as though his thoughts were elsewhere. It would have been interesting to a student of human nature to have been there and watched him as he sat back in the cab, looking through the window, indeed, but seeing apparently nothing. He seemed to be gazing through his round spectacles very short-sightedly, his eyes screwed up and dim. His fat soft hands were planted solidly on his thick knees.
The observer would have been interested because he would soon have realised that Render saw everything; nothing, however insignificant, escaped him, but he seemed to see with his brain as though he had learnt the trick of forcing it to some new function that did not properly belong to it. The broad white forehead under