The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

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She stopped in the middle of the room to listen. The hall-door closed
softly; suddenly the line of light below the door vanished. Some one had
turned down the hall-lamp. She went to the drawing-room door, opened it,
looked out, crying softly:

"Falk! Falk!"

"Yes, mother." He came across to her. He was holding a lighted candle in
his hand. "Are you still up?"

"Yes, it isn't very late. Barely eleven. Come into the drawing-room."

They went back into the room. He closed the door behind him, then put the
candle down on to a small round table; they sat in the candle-light, one
on either side of the table.

He looked at her and thought how small and fragile she looked and how
little, anyway, she meant to him.

How much most mothers meant to their sons, and how little she had ever
meant to him! He had always taken his father's view of her, that it was
necessary for her to be there, that she naturally did her best, but that
she did not expect you to think about her.

"You ought to be in bed," he said, wishing that she would release him.

For the first time in her life she spoke to him spontaneously, losing
entirely the sense that she had always had, that both he and his father
would go away and leave her if she were tiresome.

To-night he would _not_ go away--not until she had struck her bargain
with him.

"What have you been up to all these weeks, Falk?" she asked.

"Up to?" he repeated. Her challenge was unexpected.

"Yes; of course I know you're up to something, and you _know_ that I
know. You must tell me. I'm your mother and I ought to be told."

He knew at once as soon as she spoke that she was the very last person in
the world to whom he wished to tell anything. He was tired, dead tired,
and wanted to go to bed, but he was arrested by the urgency in her voice.
What was the matter with her? So intent had he been, for the past months,
on his own affairs that he had not thought of his mother at all. He looked
across the table at her--a little insignificant woman, colourless, with no
personality. And yet to-night something was happening to her. He felt all
the impatience of a man who is closely occupied with his own drama but is
forced, quite against his will, to consider some one else.

"There isn't anything to tell you, mother. Really there is not. I've just
been kicking my heels round this blasted town for the last few months and
I'm restless. I'll be going up to London very shortly."

"Why need you?" she asked him. The candle flame seemed to jump with the
sharpness of her voice.

"Why need I? But of course I must. I ask you, is this a place for _any
one_ to settle down in?"

"I don't know why it shouldn't be. I should have thought you could be very
happy here. There are so many things you could do."

"What, for instance?"

"You could be a solicitor, or go into business, or--or--why, you'd soon
find something."

He got up, taking the candle in his hand.

"Well, if that's your idea, mother, I'm sorry, but you can just put it out
of your head once and for all. I'd rather be buried alive than stay in
this hole. I _would_ be buried alive if I stayed."

She looked up at him. He was so tall, so handsome, _and so distant_--
some one who had no connection with her at all. She too got up, putting
her little hand on his arm.

"Then are we, all of us, to count for nothing at all?"

"Of course you count," he answered impatiently, irritated by the pressure
of her fingers on his coat. "You'll see plenty of me. But you can't
possibly expect me to live here. I've completely wasted my beautiful young
life so far--now apparently you want me to waste the rest of it."

"Then," she said, coming nearer to him and dropping her voice, "take me
with you."

"Take you with me!" He stepped back from her. He could not believe that he
had heard her correctly. "Take _you_ with me?"

"Yes."

"Take you with me?"

"Yes, yes, yes."

It was the greatest surprise of his life. He stared at her in his
amazement, putting the candle back upon the table.

"But why?"

"Why?...Why do you think?...Because I love you and want to be with you."

"Be with me? Leave this? Leave Polchester?...Leave father?"

"Yes, why not? Your father doesn't need me any longer. Nobody wants me
here. Why shouldn't I go?"

He came close to her, giving her now all his attention, staring at her as
though he were seeing her for the first time in his life.

"Mother, aren't you well?...Aren't you happy?"

She laughed. "Happy? Oh, yes, so happy that I'd drown myself to-night if
that would do any good."

"Here, sit down." He almost pushed her back into her chair. "We've got to
have this out. I don't know what you're talking about. You're unhappy?
Why, what's the matter?"

"The matter? Oh, nothing!" she answered. "Nothing at all, except for the
last ten years I've hated this place, hated this house, hated your
father."

"Hated father?"

He stared at her as though she had in a moment gone completely mad.

"Yes, why not?" she answered quietly. "What has he ever done that I should
feel otherwise? What attention has he ever paid to me? When has he ever
considered me except as a sort of convenient housekeeper and mistress whom
he pays to keep near him? Why shouldn't I hate him? You're very young,
Falk, and it would probably surprise you to know how many quiet stay-at-
home wives there are who hate their good, honest, well-meaning husbands."

He drew a deep breath.

"What's father ever done," he said, "to make you hate him?"

She should have realised then, from the sound in his voice, that she was,
in her preoccupation with her own affairs, forgetting one of the principal
elements in the whole case, his love for his father.

"It isn't what he's done," she answered. "It's what he hasn't done. Whom
has he ever considered but himself? Isn't his conceit so big that he can't
see any one but himself. Why should we go on pretending that he's so great
and wonderful? Do you suppose that any one can live for twenty years and
more with your father and not see how small and selfish and mean he is?
How he----"

"You're not to say that," Falk interrupted her angrily. "Father may have
his faults--so has every one--but we've got worse ones. He isn't mean and
he isn't small. He may seem conceited, but that's only because he cares so
for the Cathedral and knows what he's done for it. He's the finest man I
know anywhere. He doesn't see things as I do--I don't suppose that father
and son ever do see alike--but that needn't prevent me from admiring him.
Why, mother, what's come over you? You can't be well. Leave father! Why,
it would be terrible! Think of the talk there'd be! Why, it would ruin
father here. He'd never get over it."

She saw then the mistake that she had made. She looked across at him
beseechingly.

"You're right, Falk. I didn't mean that, I don't mean that. But I'm so
unhappy that I don't know what I'm saying. All I want is to be with you.
It wouldn't hurt father if I went up to London with you for a little. What
I really want is a holiday. I could come back after a month or two
refreshed. I'm tired."

Suddenly while she was speaking the ironical contrast hit him. Here was he
amazed at his mother for daring to contemplate a step that would do his
father harm, while he, he who professed to love his father, was about to
do something that would cause the whole town to talk for a year. But that
was different. Surely it was different. He was young and must make his own
life. He must be allowed to marry whom he would. It was not as though he
were intending to ruin the girl....

Nevertheless, this sudden comparison bewildered and shocked him.

He leant across the table to her. "You must never leave father--never," he
said. "You mustn't think of it. He wants you badly. He mayn't show it
exactly as you want it. Men aren't demonstrative as women are, but he'd be
miserable if you went away. He loves you in his own fashion, which is just
as good as yours, only different. You must _never_ leave him, mother,
do you hear?"

She saw that she was defeated, entirely and completely. She cried to the
Powers:

"You've refused me what I ask. I go my own way, then."

She got up, kissed him on the forehead and said: "I daresay you're right,
Falk. Forget what I've said. I didn't mean most of it. Good-night, dear."

She went out, quietly closing the door behind her.

Falk did not sleep at all that night. This was only one of many sleepless
nights, but it was the worst of them. The night was warm, and a faint dim
colour lingered behind the treetops of the garden beyond his open window.
First he lay under the clothes, then upon the top of his bed, then
stripped, plunging his head into a basin of water, then naked save for his
soft bedroom slippers, paced his room...His head was a flaming fire. The
pale light seemed for an instant to vanish, and the world was dark and
silent. Then, at the striking of the Cathedral clock, as though it were a
signal upon some stage, the light slowly crept back again, growing ever
stronger and stronger. The birds began to twitter; a cock crew. A bar of
golden light broken by the squares and patterns of the dark trees struck
the air.

The shock of his mother's announcement had been terrific. It was not only
the surprise of it, it was the sudden light that it flung upon his own
case. He had gone, during these last weeks, so far with Annie Hogg that it
was hard indeed to see how there could be any stepping back. They had
achieved a strange relationship together: one not of comradeship, nor of
lust, nor of desire, nor of affection, having a little of all these things
but not much of any of them, and finally resembling the case of two
strangers, shipwrecked, hanging on to a floating spar of wood that might
bring them into safety.

She was miserable; he was miserable; whether she cared for him he could
not tell, nor whether he cared for her. The excitement that she created in
him was intense, all-devouring, but it was not an excitement of lust. He
had never done more than kiss her, and he was quite ready that it should
remain so. He intended, perhaps, to marry her, but of that he could not be
sure.

But he could not leave her; he could not keep away from her although he
was seldom happy when he was with her. Slowly, gradually, through their
meetings there had grown a bond. He was more naturally himself with her
than with any other human being. Although she excited him she also
tranquillised him. Increasingly he admired and respected her--her honesty,
independence, reserve, pride. Perhaps it was upon that that their alliance
was really based--upon mutual respect and admiration. There had been
never, from the very first moment, any deception between them. He had
never been so honest with any one before--certainly not with himself. His
desire, beyond everything else in life, was to be honest: to pretend to no
emotion that he did not truly feel, to see exactly how he felt about life,
and to stand up before it unafraid and uncowed. Honesty seemed to him the
greatest quality in life; that was why he had been attracted to Ronder.
And yet life seemed to be for ever driving him into false positions. Even
now he was contemplating running away with this girl. Until to-night he
had fancied that he was only contemplating it, but his conversation with
his mother had shown him how near he was to a decision. Nevertheless, he
would talk to Ronder and to his father, not, of course, telling them
everything, but catching perhaps from them some advice that would seem to
him so true that it would guide him.

Finally, when the gold bar appeared behind the trees he forced himself
into honesty with his father. How could he have meant so sincerely that
his mother must not hurt his father when he himself was about to hurt him?

And this discovery had not lessened his determination to take the step.
Was he, then, utterly hypocritical? He knew he was not.

He could look ahead of his own affair and see that in the end his father
would admit that it had been best for him. They all knew--even his mother
must in her heart have known--that he was not going to live in Polchester
for ever. His departure for London was inevitable, and it simply was that
he would take Annie with him. That would be for a moment a blow to his
father, but it would not be so for long. And in the town his father would
win sympathy; he, Falk, would be condemned and despised. They would say:
"Ah, that young Brandon. He never was any good. His father did all he
could, but it was no use...." And then in a little time there would come
the news that he was doing well in London, and all would be right.

He looked to his talk with Ronderr. Ronder would advise well. Ronder knew
life. He was not provincial like these others....

Suddenly he was cold. He went back to bed and slept dreamlessly.

* * * * *

Next evening, as half-past eight was striking, he was at his customary
post by the river, above the "Dog and Pilchard."

A heavy storm was mounting up behind the Cathedral, black clouds being
piled tier on tier as though some gigantic shopman were shooting out rolls
of carpet for the benefit of some celestial purchaser. The Cathedral shone
in the last flash of the fleeing light with a strange phantasmal silver
sheen; once more it was a ship sailing high before the tempest.

Down by the river the dusk was grey and sodden. The river, flowing
sullenly, was a lighter dark between the line of houses and the bending
fields. The air was so heavy that men seemed to walk with bending backs as
though the burden was more than they could sustain. This section of the
river had become now to Falk something that was part of himself. The old
mill, the group of trees beside it, the low dam over which the water fell
with its own peculiar drunken gurgle, the pathway with its gritty stony
surface, so that it seemed to grind its teeth in protest at every step
that you took, on the left the town piled high behind you with the
Cathedral winged and dominant and supreme, the cool sloping fields beyond
the river, the dark bend of the wood cutting the horizon--these things
were his history and he was theirs.

There were many other places to which they might have gone, other times
that they might have chosen, but circumstances and accident had found for
them always this same background. He had long ago ceased to consider
whether any one was watching them or talking about them. They were,
neither of them, cowards, although to Annie her father was a figure of
sinister power and evil desire. She hated her father, believed him capable
of infinite wickedness, but did not fear him enough to hesitate to face
him. Nevertheless, it was from him that she was chiefly escaping, and she
gave to Falk a curious consciousness of the depths of malice and vice that
lay hidden behind that smiling face, in the secret places of that fat
jolly body. Falk was certain now that Hogg knew of their meetings; he
suspected that he had known of them from the first. Hogg had his faults
but they did not frighten Falk, who was, indeed, afraid of no man alive
save only himself.

The other element in the affair that increased as the week passed was
Falk's consciousness of the strange spirit of nobility that there was in
Annie. Although she stirred him so deeply she did not blind him as to her
character. He saw her exactly for what she was--uneducated, ignorant,
limited in all her outlook, common in many ways, sometimes surly, often
superstitious; but through all these things that strain of nobility ran,
showing itself in many unexpected places, calling to him like an echo from
some high, far-distant source. Because of it he was beginning to wonder
whether after all the alliance that was beginning to spring up between
them might not be something more permanent and durable than at first he
had ever supposed it could be. He was beginning to wonder whether he had
not been fortunate far beyond his deserts....

On this thunder-night they met like old friends who had known one another
for many years and between whom there had never been anything but
comradeship. They did not kiss, but simply touched hands and moved up
through the gathering dark to the little bridge below the mill. From here
they felt the impact of the chattering water rising to them and falling
again like a comment on their talk.

"It'll not be many more times," Annie said, "we'll be coming here."

"Why?" Falk asked.

"Because I'm going up to London whether you come or no--and _soon_
I'm going."

He admired nothing in her more than the clear-cut decision of her mind,
which moved quietly from point to point, asking no advice, allowing no
regrets when the decision was once made.

"What has happened since last time?"

"Happened? Nothing. Only father and the 'Dog,' and drink. I'm through with
it."

"And what would you do in London if you went up alone?"

She flung up her head suddenly, laughing. "You think I'm helpless, don't
you? Well, I'm not."

"No, I don't--but you don't know London."

"A fearsome place, mebbe, but not more disgustin' than father."

There was irritation in his voice as he said:

"Then it doesn't matter to you whether I come with you or not?"

Her reply was soft. She suddenly put out her hand and took his.

"Of course it matters. We're friends. The best friend I'm likely to find,
I reckon. What would I be meeting you for all these months if I didn't
care for you? Just to be admiring the scenery?--shouldn't like."

She laughed softly.

She went on: "I'm ready to go with you or without you. If we go together
I'm independent, just as though I went without you. I'm independent of
every one--father and you and all. I'll marry you if you want me, or I'll
live with you without marrying, or I'll live without you and never see you
again. I won't say that leaving you wouldn't hurt. It would, after being
with you all these weeks; but I'd rather be hurt than be dependent."

He held her hand tightly between his two.

"Folks 'ud say," she went on, "that I had no right to be talkin' of going
away with you--that I'd be ruining your future and making people look down
on you, and all that. Well, that's for you to say. If you think it harms
your prospects being with me you needn't see me. I've my own prospects to
think of. I'm not going to have any man ashamed of me."

"You're right to speak of it, and we're right to think of it," said Falk.
"It isn't my prospects that I've got to think about, but it's my father I
wouldn't like to hurt. If we go away together there'll be a great deal of
talk here, and it will all fall on my father."

"Well, then," she said, tossing her head and taking her hand away from
his, "don't come. _I'm_ not asking you. As for your father, he's that
proud----" She stopped suddenly. "No. I'm saying nothing about that. You
care for him, and you're right to. As far as that goes, we needn't go
together; you can come up later and join me."

When she said that, he knew that he couldn't bear the thought of her going
alone, and that he had all along been determined in his thought that she
should not go alone.

"If you'd say you loved me," he said, suddenly bending towards her, "I'd
never let you out of my sight again."

"Oh, yes, you would," she said; "you don't know whether you _do_ love
me. Many's the time you think you don't. And I don't know whether I love
you. Sometimes I think I do. What's love, anyway? I dunno. I think
sometimes I'm not made to feel that way towards any one. But what I really
meant to say to-night is, that I'm dead sick of this hanging-on. I'm going
up to a cousin I've got Blackheath way a week from to-night. If you're
coming, I'm glad. If you're not--well, I reckon I'll get over it."

"A week from to-day--" He looked out over the water.

"Aye. That's settled."

Then, unexpected, as she so often was, she put her arms round his neck and
drew his head down to her bosom and let her hand rest on his hair.

"I like to feel you there," she said. "It's more a mother I feel to you
than a lover."

She would not let him kiss her, but suddenly moved away from him, into the
dark, leaving him where he stood.

When he was half-way home the storm that had been slowly, during the last
hour and a half, climbing up above the town, broke. As he was crossing the
market-place the rain came down in torrents, dancing upon the uneven
cobbles with a kind of excited frenzy, and thickening the air with a
curtain of mist. He climbed the High Street, his head down, feeling a
physical satisfaction in the fierce soaking that the storm was giving him.
The town was shining and deserted. Not a soul about. No sound except the
hissing, sneering, chattering whisper of the deluge. He went up to his
room and changed, putting on a dinner jacket, and came down to his
father's study. It was too late for dinner, but he was not hungry; he did
not know how long it was since he had felt hungry last.

He knocked and went in. He felt a desperate urgency that he must somehow
reconcile the interests and happiness of the two people who were then
filling all his thoughts--his father and Annie. There must _be_ a
way. He could feel still the touch of Annie's hand upon his head; he was
more deeply bound to her by that evening's conversation than he had ever
been before, but he longed to be able to reassure himself by some contact
with his father that he was not going to hurt the old man, that he would
be able to prove to him that his loyalty was true and his affection deep.

Small causes produce lasting results, and the lives of many people would
have been changed had Falk caught his father that night in another mood.

The Archdeacon did not look up at the sound of the closing door. He was
sitting at his big table writing letters, the expression of his face being
that of a boy who has been kept in on a fine afternoon to write out the
first fifty lines of the _Iliad_. His curly hair was ruffled, his
mouth was twisted with disgust, and he pushed his big body about in his
chair, kicked out his legs and drew them in as though beneath his
concentration on his letters he was longing to spring up, catch his enemy
by the throat, roll him over on to the ground and kick him.

"Hullo, governor!" Falk said, and settled down into one of the big leather
arm-chairs, produced a pipe from his pocket and slowly filled it.

The Archdeacon went on writing, muttering to himself, biting the end of
his quill pen. He had not apparently been aware of his son's entrance, but
suddenly he sprang up, pushed back his chair until it nearly fell over,
and began to stride up and down the room. He was a fine figure then,
throwing up his head, flinging out his arms, apostrophising the world.

"Gratitude! They don't know what it means. Do you think I'll go on working
for them, wearing myself to a shadow, staying up all night--getting up at
seven in the morning, and then to have this sort of return? I'll leave the
place. I'll let them make their own mistakes and see how they like that.
I'll teach them gratitude. Here am I; for ten years I've done nothing but
slave for the town and the Cathedral. Who's worked for them as I have?"

"What's the matter, father?" Falk asked, watching him from the chair.
Every one knows the irritation of coming to some one with matters so
urgent that they occupy the whole of your mind, and then discovering that
your audience has its own determined preoccupation. "Always thinking of
himself," Falk continued. "Fusses about nothing."

"The matter?" His father turned round upon him. "Everything's the matter.
Everything! Here's this Jubilee business coming on and everything going to
ruin. Here am I, who know more about the Cathedral and what's been done in
the Cathedral for the last ten years than any one, and they are letting
Ryle have a free hand over all the Jubilee Week services without another
word to anybody."

"Well, Ryle is the Precentor, isn't he?" said Falk.

"Of course he is," the Archdeacon answered angrily. "And what a Precentor!
Every one knows he isn't capable of settling anything by himself. That's
been proved again and again. But that's only one thing. It's the same all
the way round. Opposition everywhere. It'll soon come to it that I'll have
to ask permission from the Chapter to walk down the High Street."

"All the same, father," Falk said, "you can't be expected to have the
whole of the Jubilee on your shoulders. It's more than any one man can
possibly do."

"I know that. Of course I know that. Ryle's case is only one small
instance of the way the wind's blowing. Every one's got to do their share,
of course. But in the last three months the place is changed--the
Chapter's disorganised, there's rebellion in the Choir, among the Vergers,
everywhere. The Cathedral is in pieces. And why? Who's changed everything?
Why is nothing as it was three months ago?"

"Oh, Lord! what a bore the old man is!" thought Falk. He was in the last
possible mood to enter into any of his father's complaints. They seemed
now, as he looked across at him, to be miles apart. He felt, suddenly, as
though he did not care what happened to his father, nor whether his
feelings were hurt or no----

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