The Cathedral Part 37

He sat down at the table, slowly unfolding the _Glebeshire Morning News_ that always waited, neatly, beside his plate. His hand did not tremble, although his heart was beating with a strange, m.u.f.fled agitation.

"I suppose he went off somewhere," he said. "He never tells us, of course.

He's getting too selfish for anything."

He put down his newspaper and picked up his letters. For a moment he felt as though he could not look at them in the presence of his wife. He glanced quickly at the envelopes. There was nothing there from Falk. His heart gave a little clap of relief.

"At any rate, he hasn't written," he said. "He can't be far away."

"There's another post at ten-thirty," she answered.

He was angry with her for that. How like her! Why could she not allow things to be pleasant as long as possible?

She went on: "He's taken nothing with him. Not even a hand-bag. He hasn't been back in the house since luncheon yesterday."

"Oh! he'll turn up!" Brandon went back to his paper. "Mustard, Joan, please." Breakfast over, he went into his study and sat at the long writing-table, pretending to be about his morning correspondence. He could not settle to that; he had never been one to whom it was easy to control his mind, and now his heart and soul were filled with foreboding.

It seemed to him that for weeks past he had been dreading some catastrophe. What catastrophe? What could occur?

He almost spoke aloud. "Never before have I dreaded...."

Meanwhile he would not think of Falk. He would not. His mind flew round and round that name like a moth round the candle-light. He heard half-past ten strike, first in the dining-room, then slowly on his own mantelpiece.

A moment later, through his study door that was ajar, he heard the letters fall with a soft stir into the box, then the sharp ring of the bell. He sat at his table, his hands clenched.

"Why doesn't that girl bring the letters? Why doesn't that girl bring the letters?" he was repeating to himself unconsciously again and again.

She knocked on the door, came in and put the letters on his table. There were only three. He saw immediately that one was in Falk's handwriting. He tore the envelope across, pulled out the letter, his fingers trembling now so that he could scarcely hold it, his heart making a noise as of tramping waves in his ears.

The letter was as follows:

NORTH ROAD STATION, DRYMOUTH, _May_ 23, 1897.

MY DEAR FATHER--I am writing this in the waiting-room at North Road before catching the London train. I suppose that I have done a cowardly thing in writing like this when I am away from you, and I can't hope to make you believe that it's because I can't bear to hurt you that I'm acting like a coward. You'll say, justly enough, that it looks as though I wanted to hurt you by what I'm doing. But, father, truly, I've looked at it from every point of view, and I can't see that there's anything else for it but this. The first part of this, my going up to London to earn my living, I can't feel guilty about.

It seems to me, truly, the only thing to do. I have tried to speak to you about it on several occasions, but you have always put me off, and, as far as I can see, you don't feel that there's anything ignominious in my hanging about a little town like Polchester, doing nothing at all for the rest of my life. I think my being sent down from Oxford as I was gave you the idea that I was useless and would never be any good. I'm going to prove to you you're wrong, and I know I'm right to take it into my own hands as I'm doing. Give me a little time and you'll see that I'm right.

The other thing is more difficult. I can't expect you to forgive me just yet, but perhaps, later on, you'll see that it isn't too bad. Annie Hogg, the daughter of Hogg down in Seatown, is with me, and next week I shall marry her.

I have so far done nothing that you need be ashamed of. I love her, but am not her lover, and she will stay with relations away from me until I marry her. I know this will seem horrible to you, father, but it is a matter for my own conscience. I have tried to leave her and could not, but even if I could I have made her, through my talk, determined to go to London and try her luck there. She loathes her father and is unhappy at home. I cannot let her go up to London without any protection, and the only way I can protect her is by marrying her.

She is a fine woman, father, fine and honourable and brave. Try to think of her apart from her father and her surroundings. She does not belong to them, truly she does not. In all these months she has not tried to persuade me to a mean and shabby thing. She is incapable of any meanness.

In all this business my chief trouble is the unhappiness that this will bring you. You will think that this is easy to say when it has made no difference to what I have done. But all the same it is true, and perhaps later on, when you have got past a little of your anger with me, you will give me a chance to prove it. I have the promise of some literary work that should give me enough to live on. I have taken nothing with me; perhaps mother will pack up my things and send them to me at 5 Parker Street, St. John's Wood.

Father, give me a chance to show you that I will make this right.--Your loving son,

FALK BRANDON.

In the little morning-room to the right at the top of the stairs Joan and her mother were waiting. Joan was pretending to sew, but her fingers scarcely moved. Mrs. Brandon was sitting at her writing-table; her ears were straining for every sound. The sun flooded the room with a fierce rush of colour, and through the wide-open windows the noises of the town, cries and children's voices, and the pa.s.sing of feet on the cobbles came up. As half-past ten struck the Cathedral bells began to ring for morning service.

"Oh, I can't bear those bells," Mrs. Brandon cried. "Shut the windows, Joan."

Joan went across and closed them. The bells were suddenly removed, but seemed to be the more insistent in their urgency because they were shut away.

The door was suddenly flung open, and Brandon stood there.

"Oh, what is it?" Mrs. Brandon cried, starting to her feet.

He was a man convulsed with anger; she had seen him in these rages before, when his blue eyes stared with an emptiness of vision and his whole body seemed to be twisted as though he were trying to climb to some height whence he might hurl himself down and destroy utterly that upon which he fell.

The letter tumbled from his hand. He caught the handle of the door as though he would tear it from its socket, but his voice, when at last it came, was quiet, almost his ordinary voice.

"His name is never to be mentioned in this house again."

"What has he done?"

"That's enough. What I say. His name is never to be mentioned again."

The two women stared at him. He seemed to come down from a great height, turned and went, very carefully closing the door behind him.

He had left the letter on the floor. Mrs. Brandon went and picked it up.

"Oh, mother, what has Falk done?" Joan asked.

The bells danced all over the room.

Brandon went downstairs, back into his study, closing his door, shutting himself in. He stayed in the middle of the room, saying aloud:

"Never his name again.... Never his name again." The actual sound of the words echoing back to him lifted him up as though out of very deep water.

Then he was aware, as one is in the first clear moment after a great shock, of a number of things at the same time. He hated his son because his son had disgraced him and his name for ever. He loved his son, never before so deeply and so dearly as now. He was his only son, and there was none other. His son had gone off with the daughter of the worst publican in the place, and so had shamed him before them all. Falk (he arrived in his mind suddenly at the name with a little shiver that hurt horribly) would never be there any more, would never be about the house, would never laugh and be angry and be funny any more. (Behind this thought was a long train of pictures of Falk as a boy, as a baby, as a child, pictures that he kept back with a great gesture of the will.) In the town they would all be talking, they were talking already. They must be stopped from talking; they must not know. He must lie; they must all lie. But how could they be stopped from knowing when he had gone off with the publican's daughter?

They would all know.... They would laugh...They would laugh. He would not be able to go down the street without their laughter.

Dimly on that came a larger question. What had happened lately so that his whole life had changed? He had been feeling it now for weeks, long before this terrible blow had fallen, as though he were surrounded by enemies and mockers and men who wished him ill. Men who wished him ill! Wished HIM ill! He who had never done any one harm in all his life, who had only wanted the happiness of others and the good of the place in which he was, and the Glory of G.o.d! G.o.d!...His thoughts leapt across a vast gulf. What was G.o.d about, to allow this disaster to fall upon him? When he had served G.o.d so faithfully and had had no thought but for His grandeur? He was in a new world now, where the rivers, the mountains, the roads, the cities were new. For years everything had gone well with him, and then, suddenly, at the lifting of a finger, all had been ill....

Through the mist of his thoughts, gradually, like the sun in his strength, his anger had been rising. Now it flamed forth. At the first it had been personal anger because his son had betrayed and deceived him--but now, for a time, Falk was almost forgotten.

He would show them. They would laugh at him, would they? They would point at him, would they, as the man whose son had run away with an innkeeper's daughter? Well, let them point. They would plot to take the power from his hands, to reduce him to impotence, to make him of no account in the place where he had ruled for years. He had no doubt, now that he saw farther into it, that they had persuaded Falk to run away with that girl. It was the sort of weapon that they would be likely to use, the sort of weapon that that man, Ronder....

At the sudden ringing of that now hated name in his ears he was calm. Yes, to fight that enemy he needed all his control. How that man would rejoice at this that had happened! What a victory to him it would seem to be!

Well, it should not be a victory. He began to stride up and down his study, his head up, his chest out. It was almost as though he were a great warrior of old, having his armour put on before he went out to the fight-- the greaves, the breastplate, the helmet, the sword....

He would fight to the last drop of blood in his body and beat the pack of them, and if they thought that this would cause him to hang his head or hide or go secretly, they should soon see their mistake.

He suddenly stopped. The pain that sometimes came to his head attacked him now. For a moment it was so sharp, of so acute an agony, that he almost staggered and fell. He stood there, his body taut, his hands clenched. It was like knives driving through his brain; his eyes were filled with blood so that he could not see. It pa.s.sed, but he was weak, his knees shook so that he was compelled to sit down, holding his hands on his knees. Now it was gone. He could see clearly again. What was it? Imagination, perhaps.

Only the hammering of his heart told him that anything was the matter. He was a long while there. At last he got up, went into the hall, found his hat and went out. He crossed the Green and pa.s.sed through the Cathedral door.

He went out instinctively, without any deliberate thought, to the Cathedral as to the place that would most readily soothe and comfort him.

Always when things went wrong he crossed over to the Cathedral and walked about there. Matins were just concluded and people were coming out of the great West door. He went in by the Saint Margaret door, crossed through the Vestry where Rogers, who had been taking the service, was disrobing, and climbed the little crooked stairs into the Lucifer Room. A glimpse of Rogers' saturnine countenance (he knew well enough that Rogers hated him) stirred some voice to whisper within: "He knows and he's glad."