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The Cathedral by Hugh Walpole

H >> Hugh Walpole >> The Cathedral




"Well, tell me!" said the Archdeacon, spreading his legs out, putting his
hands behind his back and standing over his son. "Who's responsible for
the change?"

"Oh, I don't know!" said Falk impatiently.

"You don't know? No, of course you don't know, because you've taken no
interest in the Cathedral nor in anything to do with it. All the same, I
should have thought it impossible for any one to be in this town half an
hour and _not_ know who's responsible. There's only one man, and that
man is Ronder."

Unfortunately Falk liked Ronder. "I think Ronder's rather a good sort," he
said. "A clever fellow, too."

The Archdeacon stared at him.

"You like him?"

"Yes, father, I do."

"And of course it matters nothing to you that he should by your father's
persistent enemy and do his best to hinder him in everything and every way
possible."

Falk smiled, one of those confident, superior smiles that are so justly
irritating to any parent.

"Oh, come, father," he said. "Aren't you rather exaggerating?"

"Exaggerating? Yes, of course you would take the other side. And what do
you know about it? There you are, lolling about in your chair, idling week
after week, until all the town talks about it----"

Falk sprang up.

"And whose fault is it if I do idle? What have I been wanting except to go
off and make a decent living? Whose fault----?"

"Oh, mine, of course!" the Archdeacon shouted. "Put it all down to me! Say
that I begged you to leave Oxford, that I want you to laze the rest of
your life away. Why shouldn't you, when you have a mother and sister to
support you?"

"Stop that, father." Falk also was shouting. "You'd better look out what
you're saying, or I'll take you at your word and leave you altogether."

"You can, for all I care," the Archdeacon shouted back. They stood there
facing one another, both of them red in the face, a curious family
likeness suddenly apparent between them.

"Well, I will then," Falk cried, and rushed from the room, banging the
door behind him.




Chapter VI

Falk's Flight



Ronder sat in his study waiting for young Falk Brandon. The books smiled
down upon him from their white shelves; because the spring evening was
chill a fire glittered and sparkled and the deep blue curtains were drawn.
Ronder was wearing brown kid slippers and a dark velvet smoking-jacket. As
he lay back in the deep arm-chair, smoking an old and familiar briar, his
chubby face was deeply contented. His eyes were almost closed; he was the
very symbol of satisfied happy and kind-hearted prosperity.

He was really touched by young Falk's approach towards friendship. He had
in him a very pleasant and happy vein of sentiment which he was only too
delighted to exercise so long as no urgent demands were made upon it. Once
or twice women and men younger than himself _had_ made such urgent
demands; with what a hurry, a scurry and a scamper had he then run from
them!

But the more tranquil, easy and unexacting aspects of sentiment he
enjoyed. He liked his heart to be warmed, he liked to feel that the
pressure of his hand, the welcome of the eye, the smile of the lip were
genuine in him and natural; he liked to put his hand through the arm of a
young eager human being who was full of vitality and physical strength. He
disliked so deeply sickness and decay; he despised them.

Falk was young, handsome and eager, something of a rebel--the greater
compliment then that he should seek out Ronder. He was certainly the most
attractive young man in Polchester and, although that was not perhaps
saying very much, after all Ronder lived in Polchester and wished to share
in the best of every side of its life.

There were, however, further, more actual reasons that Ronder should
anticipate Falk's visit with deep interest. He had heard, of course, many
rumours of Falk's indiscretions, rumours that naturally gained greatly in
the telling, of how he had formed some disgraceful attachment for the
daughter of a publican down in the river slums, that he drank, that he
gambled, that he was the wickedest young man in Polchester, and that he
would certainly break his father's heart.

It was this relation of the boy to his father that interested him most of
all. He continued to remark to the little god who looked after his affairs
and kept an eye upon him that the last thing that he wanted was to
interfere in Brandon's family business, and yet to the same little god he
could not but comment on the curious persistency with which that same
business would thrust itself upon his interest. "If Brandon's wife, son,
and general _ménage_ will persist in involving themselves in absurd
situations it's not my fault," he would say. But he was not exactly sorry
that they should.

Indeed, to-night, in the warm security of his room, with all his plans
advancing towards fulfillment, and life developing just as he would have
it, he felt so kindly a pity towards Brandon that he was warm with the
desire to do something for him, make him a present, or flatter his vanity,
or give way publicly to him about some contested point that was of no
particular importance.

When young Falk was ushered in by the maid-servant, Ronder, looking up at
him, thought him the handsomest boy he'd ever seen. He felt ready to give
him all the advice in the world, and it was with the most genuine warmth
of heart that he jumped up, put his hand on his shoulder, found him
tobacco, whisky and soda, and the easiest chair in the room.

It was apparent at once that the boy was worked up to the extremity of his
possible endurance. Ronder felt instantly the drama that he brought with
him, filling the room with it, charging every word and every movement with
the implication of it.

He turned about in his chair, struck many matches, pulled desperately at
his pipe, stared at Ronder with a curious mixture of shyness and eagerness
that betrayed his youth and his sense of Ronder's importance. Ronder began
by talking easily about nothing at all, a diversion for which he had an
especial talent. Falk suddenly broke upon him:

"Look here. You don't care about that stuff--nor do I. I didn't come round
to you for that. I want you to help me."

"I'll be very glad to," Ronder said, smiling. "If I can."

"Perhaps you can--perhaps you can't. I don't know you really, of course--I
only have my idea of you. But you seem to me much older than I am. Do you
know what I mean? Father's as young or younger and so are so many of the
others. But you must have made your mind up about life. I want to know
what you think of it."

"That's a tall order," said Ronder, smiling. "What one thinks of life!
Well, one can't say all in a moment, you know."

And then, as though he had suddenly decided to take his companion
seriously, his face was grave and his round shining eyes wide open.

Falk coloured. "Perhaps you think me impertinent," he said. "But I don't
care a damn if you do. After all, isn't it an absurd thing that there
isn't another soul in this town you could ask such a question of? And yet
there's nothing else so important. A fellow's thought an impossible prig
if he mentions such a thing. I expect I seem in a hurry too, but I can
tell you I've been irritated for years by not being able to get at it--the
truth, you know. Why we're here at all, whether there is some kind of a
God somewhere or no. Of course you've got to pretend you think there is,
but I want to know what you _really_ think and I promise it shan't go
a step farther. But most of all I want to know whether you don't think
we're meant all of us to be free, and why being free should be the hardest
thing of all."

"You must tell me one thing," said Ronder. "Is the impulse that brought
you in to see me simply a general one, just because you are interested in
life, or is there some immediate crisis that you have to settle? I ask
that," he added, smiling gently, "because I've noticed that people don't
as a rule worry very urgently about life unless they have to make up their
minds about which turn in the road they're going to take."

Falk hesitated; then he said, speaking slowly, "Yes, there is something.
It's what you'd call a 'crisis in my life, I suppose. It's been piling up
for months--for years if you like. But I don't see why I need bother you
with that--it's nobody's business but my own. Although I won't deny that
things you say may influence me. You see, I felt the first moment I met
you that you'd speak the truth, and speaking the truth seems to me more
important than anything else in the world."

"But," said Ronder, "I don't want to influence you blindly. You've no
right to ask me to advise you when I don't know what it is I am advising
you about."

"Well, then," said Falk, "it's simply this--that I want to go up to London
and live my own life. But I love my father--it would all be easy enough if
I didn't--and he doesn't see things as I do. There are other things too--
it's all very complicated. But I don't want you to tell me about my own
affairs! I just want you to say what you think this is all about, what
we're here for anyway. You must have thought it all through and come out
the other side. You look as though you had."

Ronder hesitated. He really wished that this had not occurred. He could
defeat Brandon without being given this extra weapon. His impulse was to
put the boy off with some evasion and so to dismiss him. But the
temptation that was always so strong in him to manipulate the power placed
in his hands was urging him; moreover, why should he not say what he
thought about life? It was sincere enough. He had no shame of it....

"I couldn't advise you against your father's wishes," he said. "I'm very
fond of your father. I have the highest opinion of him."

Falk moved uneasily in his chair: "You needn't advise me against him," he
said; "you can't have a higher opinion of him than I have. I'm fonder of
him than of any one in the world; I wouldn't be hesitating at all
otherwise. And I tell you I don't want you to advise me on my particular
case. It just interests me to know whether you believe in a God and
whether you think life means anything. As soon as I saw you I said to
myself, 'Now I'd like to know what _he_ thinks.' That's all."

"Of course I believe in a God," said Ronder, "I wouldn't be a clergyman
otherwise."

"Then if there's a God," said Falk quickly, "why does He let us down, make
us feel that we must be free, and then make us feel that it's wrong to be
free because, if we are, we hurt the people we're fond of? Do we live for
ourselves or for others? Why isn't it easier to see what the right thing
is?"

"If you want to know what I think about life," said Ronder, "it's just
this--that we mustn't take ourselves too seriously, that we must work our
utmost at the thing we're in, and give as little trouble to others as
possible."

Falk nodded his head. "Yes, that's very simple. If you'll forgive my
saying so, that's the sort of thing any one says to cover up what he
really feels. That's not what _you_ really feel. Anyway it accounts
for simply nothing at all. If that's all there is in life----"

"I don't say that's all there is in life," interrupted Ronder softly, "I
only say that that does for a start--for one's daily conduct I mean. But
you've got to rid your head of illusions. Don't expect poetry and magic
for ever round the corner. Don't dream of Utopias--they'll never come.
Mind your own daily business."

"Play for safety, in fact," said Falk.

Ronder coloured a little. "Not at all. Take every kind of risk if you
think your happiness depends upon it. You're going to serve the world best
by getting what you want and resting contented in it. It's the
discontented and disappointed who hang things up."

Falk smiled. "You're pushing on to me the kind of philosophy that I'd like
to follow," he said. "I don't believe in it for a moment nor do I believe
it's what you really think, but I think I'm ready to cheat myself if you
give me encouragement enough. I don't want to do any one any harm, but I
must come to a conclusion about life and then follow it so closely that I
can never have any doubt about any course of action again. When I was a
small boy the Cathedral used to terrify me and dominate me too. I believed
in God then, of course, and I used to creep in and listen, expecting to
hear Him speak. That tomb of the Black Bishop seemed to me the place where
He'd most likely be, and I used to fancy sometimes that He did speak from
the heart of that stone. But I daresay it was the old Bishop himself.

"Anyway, I determined long ago that the Cathedral has a life of its own,
quite apart from any of us. It has more immortality in one stone of its
nave than we have in all our bodies."

"Don't be too sure of that," Ronder said. "We have our immortality--a tiny
flame, but I believe that it never dies. Beauty comes from it and dwells
in it. We increase it or diminish it as we live."

"And yet," said Falk eagerly, "you were urging, just now, a doctrine of
what, if you'll forgive my saying so, was nothing but selfishness. How do
you reconcile that with immortality?"

Ronder laughed. "There have only been four doctrines in the history of the
world," he answered, "and they are all Pursuits. One is the pursuit of
Unselfishness. 'Little children, love one another. He that seeks to save
his soul shall lose it.' The second is the opposite of the first--
Individualism. 'I am I. That is all I know, and I will seek out my own
good always because that at least I can understand.' The third is the
pursuit of God and Mysticism. 'Neither I matter nor my neighbour. I give
up the world and every one and everything in it to find God.' And the
fourth is the pursuit of Beauty. 'Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty. That
is all we need to know.' Every man and woman alive or dead has chosen one
of those four or a mixture of them. I would say that there is something in
all of them, Charity, Individualism, Worship, Beauty. But finally, when
all is said and done, we remain ourselves. It is our own life that we must
lead, our own goal for which we are searching. At the end of everything we
remain alone, of ourselves, by ourselves, for ourselves. Life is, finally,
a lonely journey to a lonely bourne, let us cheat ourselves as we may."

Ronder sat back in his chair, his eyes half closed. There was nothing that
he enjoyed more than delivering his opinions about life to a fit audience
--and by fit he meant intelligent and responsive. He liked to be truthful
without taking risks, and he was always the audience rather than the
speaker in company that might be dangerous. He almost loved Falk as he
looked across at him and saw the effect that his words had made upon him.
There was, Heaven knew, nothing very original in what he had said, but it
had been apparently what the boy had wanted to hear.

He jumped up from his chair: "You're right," he said. "We've got to lead
our own lives. I've known it all along. When I've shown them what I can
do, then I'll come back to them. I love my father, you know, sir; I
suppose some people here think him tiresome and self-opinionated, but he's
like a boy, you always know where you are with him. He's no idea what
deceit means. He looks on this Cathedral as his own idea, as though he'd
built it almost, and of course that's dangerous. He'll have a shock one of
these days and see that he's gone too far, just as the Black Bishop did.
But he's a fine man; I don't believe any one knows how proud I am of him.
And it's much better I should go my own way and earn my own living than
hang around him, doing nothing--isn't it?"

At that direct appeal, at the eager gaze that Falk fixed upon him,
something deep within Ronder stirred.

Should he not even now advise the boy to stay? One word just then might
effect much. Falk trusted him. He was the only human being in Polchester
to whom the boy perhaps had come. Years afterwards he was to look back to
that moment, see it crystallised in memory, see the books, piled row upon
row, gleam down upon him, see the blue curtain and hear the crackling
fire...a crisis perhaps to himself as well as to Falk.

He went across to the boy and put his hands on his shoulders.

"Yes," he said, "I think it's better for you to go."

"And about God and Beauty?" Falk said, staring for a moment into Ronder's
eyes, smiling shyly, and then turning away. "It's a long search, isn't it?
But as long as there's something there, beyond life, and I know there is,
the search is worth it."

He looked rather wistfully at Ronder as though he expected him to confirm
him again. But Ronder said nothing.

Falk went to the door: "Well, I must go. I'll show them that I was right
to go my own way. I want father to be proud of me. This will shock him for
a moment, but soon he'll see. I think you'll like to know, sir," he said,
suddenly turning and holding out his hand, "that this little talk has
meant a lot to me. It's just helped me to make up my mind."

When he had gone Ronder sat in his chair, motionless, for a while; he
jumped up, went to the shelves, and found a book. Before he sat down again
he said aloud, as though he were answering some accuser, "Well, I told him
nothing, anyway."

Falk had, from the moment he left Ronder's door, his mind made up, and now
that it _was_ made up he wished to act as speedily as possible. And
instantly there followed an appeal of the Town, so urgent and so poignant
that he was taken by surprise. He had lived there most of his days and
never seen it until now, but every step that he took soon haunted him. He
made his plans decisively, irrevocably, but he found himself lingering at
doors and at windows, peering over walls, hanging over the Pol bridge,
waiting suddenly as though he expected some message was about to be given
to him.

The town was humming with life those days. The May weather was lovely,
softly blue with cool airs and little white clouds like swollen pin-
cushions drifting lazily from point to point. The gardens were dazzling
with their flowers, the Cathedral Green shone like glass, and every door-
knob and brass knocker in the Precincts glittered under the sun.

The town was humming with the approaching Jubilee. It seemed itself to
take an active part in the preparations, the old houses smiling to one
another at the plans that they overheard, and the birds, of whom there
were a vast number, flying from wall to wall, from garden to garden, from
chimney to chimney, with the exciting news that they had gathered.

Every shop in the High Street seemed to whisper to Falk as he passed:
"Surely you are not going to leave us. We can offer you such charming
things. We've never been so gay in our lives before as we are going to be
now."

Even the human beings in the place seemed to be nicer to him than they had
ever been before. They had never, perhaps, been very nice to him,
regarding him with a quite definite disapproval even when he was a little
boy, because he would go his own way and showed them that he didn't care
what they thought of him.

Now, suddenly, they were making up to him. Mrs. Combermere, surrounded
with dogs, stopped him in the High Street and, in a deep bass voice, asked
him why it was so long since he had been to see her, and then slapped him
on the shoulder with her heavy gloved hand. That silly woman, Julia
Preston, met him in Bennett's book shop and asked him to help her to
choose a book of poems for a friend.

"Something that shall be both True and Beautiful, Mr. Brandon," she said.
"There's so little real Beauty in our lives, don't you think?" Little
Betty Callender caught him up in Orange Street and chattered to him about
her painting, and that pompous Bentinck-Major insisted on his going into
the Conservative Club with him, where he met old McKenzie and older
Forrester, and had to listen to their golfing achievements.

It may have been simply that every one in the town was beside and above
himself over the Jubilee excitements--but it made it very hard for Falk.
Nothing to the hardness of everything at home. Here at the last moment,
when it was too late to change or alter anything, every room, every old
piece of furniture seemed to appeal to him with some especial claim. For
ten years he had had the same bedroom, an old low-ceilinged room with
queer bulges in the wall, a crooked fireplace and a slanting floor. For
years now he had had a wall-paper with an ever-recurrent scene of a church
tower, a snowy hill, and a large crimson robin. The robins were faded, and
the snowy hill a dingy yellow. There were School groups and Oxford groups
on the walls, and the book-case near the door had his old school prizes
and Henty and a set of the Waverley Novels with dark red covers and paper
labels.

Hardest of all to leave was the view from the window overlooking the
Cathedral Green and the Cathedral. That window had been connected with
every incident of his childhood. He had leant out of it when he had felt
sick from eating too much, he had gone to it when his eyes were brimming
with hot rebellious tears after some scene with his father, he had known
ecstatic joys gazing from it on the first day of his return from school,
he had thrown things out of it on the heads of unsuspecting strangers, he
had gone to it in strange moods of poetry and romance, and watched the
moon like a plate of dull and beaten gold sail above the Cathedral towers,
he had sat behind it listening to the organ like a muffled giant
whispering to be liberated from grey, confining walls, he had looked out
of it on a still golden evening when the stars were silver buttons in the
sky after a meeting with Annie; he went to it and gazed, heart-sick,
across the Green now when he was about to bid fare-well to it for ever.

Heart-sick but resolved, it seemed strange to him that after months of
irresolution his mind should now be so firmly composed. He seemed even,
prophetically, to foretell the future. What had reassured him he did not
know, but for himself he knew that he was taking the right step. For
himself and for Annie--outside that, it was as though a dark cloud was
coming up enveloping all that he was leaving behind. He could not tell how
he knew, but he felt as though he were fleeing from the city of
Polchester, and were being driven forward on his flight by powers far
stronger than he could control.

He fancied, as he looked out of his window, that the Cathedral also was
aware and, aloof, immortal, waited the inevitable hour.

Coming straight upon his final arrangements with Annie, his reconciliation
with his father was ironic. So deeply here were his real affections
stirred that he could not consider deliberately his approaching treachery;
nevertheless he did not for a moment contemplate withdrawal from it. It
was as though two personalities were now in active movement within him,
the one old, belonging to the town, to his father, to his own youth, the
other new, belonging to Annie, to the future, to ambition, to the
challenge of life itself. With every hour the first was moving away from
him, reluctantly, stirring the other self by his withdrawal but inevitably
moving, never, never to return.

He came, late in the afternoon, into the study and found his father,
balanced on the top of a small ladder, putting straight "Christ's Entry
into Jerusalem," a rather faded copy of Benjamin Haydon's picture that had
irritated Falk since his earliest youth by a kind of false theatricality
that inhabited it.

Falk paused at the door, caught up by a sudden admiration of his father.
He had his coat off, and as he bent forward to adjust the cord the vigour
and symmetry of his body was magnificently emphasized. The thick strong
legs pressed against the black cloth of his trousers, the fine rounded
thighs, the broad back almost bursting the shiny stuff of the waistcoat,
the fine neck and the round curly head, these denied age and decay. He was
growing perhaps a little stout, the neck was a little too thick for the
collar, but the balance and energy and strength of the figure belonged to
a man as young as Falk himself....

At the sound of the door closing he turned, and at once the lined
forehead, the mouth a little slack, gave the man his age, but Falk was to
remember that first picture for the rest of his life with a strange
poignancy and deeply affectionate pathos.

They had not met alone since their quarrel; their British horror of any
scene forbade the slightest allusion to it. Brandon climbed down from his
ladder and came, smiling, across to his son.

At his happy times, when he was at ease with himself and the world, he had
the confident gaiety of a child; he was at ease now. He put his hand
through Falk's arm and drew him across to the table by the window.

"I've had a headache," he said, rather as a child might complain to his
elder, "for two days, and now it's suddenly gone. I never used to have
headaches. But I've been irritated lately by some of the tomfoolery that's
been going on. Don't tell your mother; I haven't said a word to her; but
what do you take when you have a headache?"

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