The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

Every one has, at one time or another, known the experience of watching some friend or acquaintance moved suddenly from the ordinary atmosphere of every day into some dramatic region of crisis where he becomes, for a moment, far more than life-size in his struggle against the elements; he is lifted, like Siegmund in _The Valkyrie_, into the clouds for his last and most desperate duel.

There was something of this feeling in the attitude taken in our town after the Jubilee towards Archdeacon Brandon. As Miss Stiles said (not meaning it at all unkindly), it really was very fortunate for everybody that the town had the excitement of the Pybus appointment to follow immediately the Jubilee drama; had it not been so, how flat would every one have been! And by the Pybus appointment she meant, of course, the Decline and Fall of Archdeacon Brandon, and the issue of his contest with delightful, clever Canon Ronder.