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——

"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 menage 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?"

"I don't think I ever have them," said Falk.

"I'm not going to stuff myself up with all their medicines and things. I've never taken medicine in my life if I was strong enough to prevent them giving it to me, and I'm not going to start it now."

"Father," Falk said very earnestly, "don't let yourself get so easily irritated. You usedn't to be. Everybody finds things go badly sometimes. It's bad for you to allow yourself to be worried. Everything's all right and going to be all right." (The hypocrite that he felt himself as he said this!)

"You know that every one thinks the world of you here. Don't take things too seriously."

Brandon nodded his head.

"You're quite right, Falk. It's very sensible of you to mention it, my boy. I usedn't to lose my temper as I do. I must keep control of myself better. But when a lot of chattering idiots start gabbling about things that they understand as much about as——"

"Yes, I know," said Falk, putting his hand upon his father's arm. "But let them talk. They'll soon find their level."

"Yes, and then there's your mother," went on Brandon. "I'm bothered about her. Have you noticed anything odd about her this last week or two?"

That his father should begin to worry about his mother was certainly astonishing enough! Certainly the first time in all these years that Brandon had spoken of her.

"Mother? No; in what way?"

"She's not herself. She's not happy. She's worrying about something."

"You're worrying, father," Falk said, "that's what's the matter. She's just the same. You've been allowing yourself to worry about everything. Mother's all right." And didn't he know, in his own secret heart, that she wasn't?

Brandon shook his head. "You may he right. All the same——"

Falk said slowly: "Father, what would you say if I went up to London?" This was a close approach to the subject of their quarrel of the other evening.

"When? What for?"

"Oh, at once—to get something to do."

"No, not now. After the summer we might talk of it."

He spoke with utter decision, as he had always done to Falk, as though he were five years old and could naturally know nothing about life.

"But, father—don't you think it's bad for me, hanging round here doing nothing?"

Brandon got up, went across to the little ladder, hesitated a moment, then climbed up.

"I've had this picture twenty years," he said, "and it's never hung straight yet."

"No, but, father," said Falk, coming across to him, "I'm a man now, not a boy. I can't hang about any longer—I can't really."

"We'll talk about it in the autumn," said Brandon, humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers," as he always did, a little out of tune.

"I've got to earn my own living, haven't I?" said Falk.

"There!" said Brandon, stepping back a little, so that he nearly overbalanced. "That's better. But it won't stay like that for five minutes. It never does."

He climbed down again, his face rosy with his exertions. "You leave it to me, Falk," he said, nodding his head. "I've got plans for you."

A sudden sense of the contrast between Ronder and his father smote Falk. His father! What an infant! How helpless against that other! Moved by the strangest mixture of tenderness, regret, pity, he did what he had never in all his life before dreamed of doing, what he would have died of shame for doing, had any one else been there—put his hands on his father's shoulders and kissed him lightly on his cheek.

He laughed as he did so, to carry off his embarrassment.

"I don't hold myself bound, you know, father," he said. "I shall go off just when I want to."

But Brandon was too deeply confused by his son's action to hear the words. He felt a strange, most idiotic impulse to hug his son; to place himself well out of danger, he moved back to the window, humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

He looked out upon the Green. "There are two of those choir-boys on the grass again," he said. "If Ryle doesn't keep them in better order, I'll let him know what I think of him. He's always promising and never does anything."

The last talk of their lives alone together was ended.

* * * * *

He had made all his plans. He had decided that on the day of escape he would walk over to Salis Coombe station, a matter of some two miles; there he would be joined by Annie, whose aunt lived near there, and to whom she could go on a visit the evening before. They would catch the slow four o'clock train to Drymouth and then meet the express that reached London at midnight. He would go to an Oxford friend who lived in St. John's Wood, and he and Annie would be married as soon as possible. Beyond everything else he wanted this marriage to take place quickly; once that was done he was Annie's protector, so long as she should need him. She should be free as she pleased, but she would have some one to whom she might go, some one who could legally provide for her and would see that she came to no harm.

The thing that he feared most was lest any ill should come to her through the fact of his caring for her; he felt that he could let her go for ever the very day after his marriage, so that he knew that she would never come to harm. A certain defiant courage in her, mingled with her ignorance and simplicity, made his protection of her the first thing in his life. As to living, his Oxford friend was concerned with various literary projects, having a little money of his own, and much self-confidence and ambition.

He and Falk had already, at Oxford, edited a little paper together, and Falk had been promised some reader's work in connection with one of the younger publishing houses. In after years he looked back in amazement that he should have ventured on the great London attack with so slender a supply of ammunition—but now, looking forward in Polchester, that question of future livelihood seemed the very smallest of his problems.

Perhaps, deepest of all, something fiercely democratic in him longed for the moment when he might make his public proclamation of his defiance of class.

He meant to set off, simply as he was; they could send his things after him. If he indulged in any pictures of the future, he did, perhaps, see himself returning to Polchester in a year's time or so, as the editor of the most remarkable of London's new periodicals, received by his father with enthusiasm, and even Annie admitted into the family with approval. Of course, they could not return here to live...it would be only a visit.... At that sudden vision of Annie and his father face to face, that vision faded; no, this was the end of the old life. He must face that, set his shoulders square to it, steel his heart to it....

That last luncheon was the strangest meal that he had ever known. So strange because it was so usual—so ordinary! Roast chicken and apple tart; his mother sitting at the end of the table, watching, as she had watched through so many years, that everything went right, her little, tight, expressionless face, the mouth set to give the right answers to the right questions, her eyes veiled.... His mind flew back to that strange talk in the dark room across the candle-lit table. She had been hysterical that night, over-tired, had not known what she was saying. Well, she could never leave his father now, now when he was gone. His flight settled that.

"What are you doing this afternoon, Falk?"

"Why, mother?"

"I only wondered. I have to go to the Deanery about this Jubilee committee. I thought you might walk up there with me. About four."

"I don't think I'll be back in time, mother; I'm going out Salis Coombe way to see a fellow."

He saw Joan, looking so pretty, sitting opposite to him. How she had grown lately! Putting her hair up made her seem almost a woman. But what a child in the grown-up dress with the high puffed sleeves, her baby-face laughing at him over the high stiff collar; a pretty dress, though, that dark blue stuff with the white stripes.... Why had he never considered Joan? She had never meant anything to him at all. Now, when he was going, it seemed to him suddenly that he might have made a friend of her during all these years. She was a good girl, kind, good-natured, jolly.

She, too, was talking about the Jubilee—about some committee that she was on and some flags that they were making. How exciting to them all the Jubilee was, and how unimportant to him!

Some book she was talking about. "...the new woman at the Library is so nice. She let me have it at once. It's The Massarenes, mother, darling, by Ouida. The girls say it's lovely."

"I've heard of it, dear. Mrs. Sampson was talking about it. She says it's not a nice book at all. I don't think father would like you to read it."

"Oh, you don't mind, father, do you?"

"What's that?"

The Archdeacon was in a good humour. He loved apple tart.

"The Massarenes, by Ouida."

"Trashy novels. Why don't you girls ever read anything but novels?" and so on.

The little china clock with the blue mandarin on the mantelpiece struck half past two. He must be going. He threw a last look round the room as though he were desperately committing everything to memory—the shabby, comfortable chairs, the Landseer "Dignity and Impudence," the warm, blue carpet, the round silver biscuit-tin on the sideboard.

"Well, I must be getting along."

"You'll be back to dinner, Falk dear, won't you? It's early to-night. Quarter past seven. Father has a meeting."

He looked at them all. His father was sitting back in his chair, a satisfied man.

"Yes, I'll be back," he said, and went out.

It seemed to him incredible that departure should be so simple. When you are taking the most momentous step of your life, surely there should be dragons in the way! Here were no dragons. As he went down the High Street people smiled at him and waved hands. The town sparkled under the afternoon sun. It was market-day, and the old fruit-woman under the green umbrella, the toy-man with the clockwork monkeys, the flower-stalls and the vegetable-sellers, all these were here; in the centre of the square, sheep and pigs were penned. Dogs were barking, stout farmers in corduroy breeches walked about arguing and expectorating, and suddenly, above all the clamour and bustle, the Cathedral chimes struck the hour.

He hastened then, striding up Orange Street, past the church and the monument on the hill, through hedges thick with flowers, until he struck off into the Drymouth Road. With every step that he took he stirred child memories. He reached the signpost that pointed to Drymouth, to Clinton St. Mary, to Polchester. This was the landmark that he used to reach with his nurse on his walks. Further than this she, a stout, puffing woman, would never go. He had known that a little way on there was Rocket Wood, a place beloved by him ever since they had driven there for a picnic in the jingle, and he had found it all spotted gold under the fir-trees, thick with moss and yellow with primroses. How many fights with his nurse he had had over that! he clinging to the signpost and screaming that he would go on to the Wood, she picking him up at last and carrying him back down the road.

He went on into the wood now and found it again spotted with gold, although it was too late for primroses. It was all soft and dark with pillars of purple light that struck through the fretted blue, and the dark shadows of the leaves. All hushed and no living thing—save the hesitating patter of some bird among the fir-cones. He struck through the wood and came out on to the Common. You could smell the sea finely here—a true Glebeshire smell, fresh and salt, full of sea-pinks and the westerly gales. On the top of the Common he paused and looked back. He knew that from here you had your last view of the Cathedral.

Often in his school holidays he had walked out here to get that view. He had it now in its full glory. When he was a boy it had seemed to him that the Cathedral was like a giant lying down behind the hill and leaning his face on the hill-side. So it looked now, its towers like ears, the great East window shining, a stupendous eye, out over the bending wind-driven country. The sun flashed upon it, and the towers rose grey and pearl- coloured to heaven. Mightily it looked across the expanse of the moor, staring away and beyond Falk's little body into some vast distance, wrapped in its own great dream, secure in its mighty memories, intent upon its secret purposes.

Indifferent to man, strong upon its rock, hiding in its heart the answer to all the questions that tortured man's existence—and yet, perhaps, aware of man's immortality, scornful of him for making so slight a use of that—but admiring him, too, for the tenacity of his courage and the undying resurgence of his hope.

Falk, a black dot against the sweep of sky and the curve of the dark soil, vanished from the horizon.



Chapter VII

Brandon Puts on His Armour



Brandon was not surprised when, on the morning after Falk's escape, his son was not present at family prayers. That was not a ceremony that Falk had ever appreciated. Joan was there, of course, and just as the Archdeacon began the second prayer Mrs. Brandon slipped in and took her place.

After the servants had filed out and the three were alone, Mrs. Brandon, with a curious little catch in her voice, said:

"Falk has been out all night; his bed has not been slept in."

Brandon's immediate impulse, before he had even caught the import of his wife's words, was: "There's reason for emotion coming; see that you show none."

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, muffled 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 passing 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 God! God!...His thoughts leapt across a vast gulf. What was God about, to allow this disaster to fall upon him? When he had served God 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 passed, 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 passed 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."

The Lucifer Room was a favourite resort of his, favourite because there was a long bare floor across which he could walk with no furniture to interrupt him, and because, too, no one ever came there. It was a room in the Bishop's Tower that had once, many hundreds of years ago, been used by the monks as a small refectory. Many years had passed now since it had seen any sort of occupation save that of bats, owls and mice. There was a fireplace at the far end that had long been blocked up, but that still showed curious carving, the heads of monkeys and rabbits, winged birds, a twisting dragon with a long tail, and the figure of a saint holding up a crucifix. Over the door was an old clock that had long ceased to tell the hours; this had a strangely carved wood canopy. Two little windows with faint stained glass gave an obscure light. The subjects of these windows were confused, but the old colours, deep reds and blues, blended with a rich glow that no modern glass could obtain. The ribs and bosses of the vaulting of the room were in faded colours and dull gold. In one corner of the room was an old, dusty, long-neglected harmonium. Against the wall were hanging some wooden figures, large life-sized saints, two male and two female, once outside the building, painted on the wood in faded crimson and yellow and gold. Much of the colour had been worn away with rain and wind, but two of the faces were still bright and stared with a gentle fixed gaze out into the dim air. Two old banners, torn and thin, flapped from one of the vaultings. The floor was worn, and creaked with every step. As Brandon pushed back the heavy door and entered, some bird in a distant corner flew with a frightened stir across to the window. Occasionally some one urged that steps should be taken to renovate the place and make some use of it, but nothing was ever done. Stories connected with it had faded away; no one now could tell why it was called the Lucifer Room—and no one cared.

Its dimness and shadowed coloured light suited Brandon to-day. He wanted to be where no one could see him, where he could gather together the resistance with which to meet the world. He paced up and down, his hands behind his back; he fancied that the old saints looked at him with kindly affection.

And now, for a moment, all his pride and anger were gone, and he could think of nothing but his love for his son. He had an impulse that almost moved him to hurry home, to take the next train up to London, to find Falk, to take him in his arms and forgive him. He saw again and again that last meeting that they had had, when Falk had kissed him. He knew now what that had meant. After all, the boy was right. He had been in the wrong to have kept him here, doing nothing. It was fine of the boy to take things into his own hands, to show his independence and to fight for his own individuality. It was what he himself would have done if—then the thought of Annie Hogg cut across his tenderness and behind Annie her father, that fat, smiling, red-faced scoundrel, the worst villain in the town. At the sudden realisation that there was now a link between himself and that man, and that that link had been forged by his own son, tenderness and affection fled. He could only entertain one emotion at a time, and immediately he was swept into such a fury that he stopped in his walk, lifted his head, and cursed Falk. For that he would never forgive him, for the public shame and disgrace that he had brought upon the Brandon name, upon his mother and his sister, upon the Cathedral, upon all authority and discipline and seemliness in the town.

He suffered then the deepest agony that perhaps in all his life he had ever known. There was no one there to see. He sank down upon the wooden coping that protruded from the old wall and hid his face in his hands as though he were too deeply ashamed to encounter even the dim faces of the old wooden figures.

There was a stir in the room; the little door opened and closed; the bird, with a flutter of wings, flew back to its corner. Brandon looked up and saw a faint shadow of a man. He rose and took some steps towards the door, then he stopped because be saw that the man was Davray the painter.

He had never spoken to this man, but be had hated everything that he had ever heard about him. In the first place, to be an artist was, in the Archdeacon's mind, synonymous with being a loose liver and an atheist. Then this fellow was, as all the town knew, a drunkard, an idler, a dissolute waster who had brought nothing upon Polchester but disgrace. Had Brandon had his way he would, long ago, have had him publicly expelled and forbidden ever to return. The thought that this man should be in the Cathedral at all was shocking to him and, in his present mood, quite intolerable. He saw, dim though the light was, that the man was drunk now.

Davray lurched forward a step, then said huskily:

"Well, so your fine son's run away with Hogg's pretty daughter."

The sense that he had had already that his son's action, had suddenly bound him into company with all the powers of evil and destruction rose to its full height at the sound of the man's voice; but with it rose, too, his self-command. The very disgust with which Davray filled him contributed to his own control and dignity.

"You should feel ashamed, sir," he said quietly, standing still where be was, "to be in that condition in this building. Or are you too drunk to know where you are?"

"That's all right, Archdeacon," Davray said, laughing. "Of course I'm drunk. I generally am—and that's my affair. But I'm not so drunk as not to know where I am and not to know who you are and what's happened to you. I know all those things, I'm glad to say. Perhaps I am a little ahead of yourself in that. Perhaps you don't know yet what your young hopeful has been doing."

Brandon was as still as one of the old wooden saints.

"Then if you are sober enough to know where you are, leave this place and do not return to it until you are in a fit state."

"Fit! I like that." The sense that he was alone now for the first time in his life with the man whom he had so long hated infuriated Davray. "Fit? Let me tell you this, old cock, I'm twice as fit to be here as you're ever likely to be. Though I have been drinking and letting myself go, I'm fitter to be here than you are, you stuck-up, pompous fool."

Brandon did not stir.

"Go home!" he said; "go home! Recover your senses and ask God's forgiveness."

"God's forgiveness!" Davray moved a step forward as though he would strike. Brandon made no movement. "That's like your damned cheek. Who wants forgiveness as you do? Ask this Cathedral—ask it whether I have not loved it, adored it, worshipped it as I've worshipped no woman. Ask it whether I have not been faithful, drunkard and sot as I am. And ask it what it thinks of you—of your patronage and pomposity and conceit. When have you thought of the Cathedral and its beauty, and not always of yourself and your grandeur?...Why, man, we're sick of you, all of us from the top man in the place to the smallest boy. And the Cathedral is sick of you and your damned conceit, and is going to get rid of you, too, if you won't go of yourself. And this is the first step. Your son's gone with a whore to London, and all the town's laughing at you."

Brandon did not flinch. The man was close to him; he could smell his drunken breath—but behind his words, drunken though they might be, was a hatred so intense, so deep, so real, that it was like a fierce physical blow. Hatred of himself. He had never conceived in all his life that any one hated him—and this man had hated him for years, a man to whom he had never spoken before to-day.

Davray, as was often his manner, seemed suddenly to sober. He stood aside and spoke more quietly, almost without passion.

"I've been waiting for this moment for years," he said; "you don't know how I've watched you Sunday after Sunday strutting about this lovely place, happy in your own conceit. Your very pride has been an insult to the God you pretend to serve. I don't know whether there's a God or no— there can't be, or things wouldn't happen as they do—but there is this place, alive, wonderful, beautiful, triumphant, and you've dared to put yourself above it....

"I could have shouted for joy last night when I heard what your young hopeful had done. 'That's right,' I said; 'that'll bring him down a bit. That'll teach him modesty.' I had an extra drink on the strength of it. I've been hanging about all the morning to get a chance of speaking to you. I followed you up here. You're one of us now, Archdeacon. You're down on the ground at last, but not so low as you will be before the Cathedral has finished with you."

"Go," said Brandon, "or, House of God though this is, I'll throw you out."

"I'll go. I've said my say for the moment. But we'll meet again, never fear. You're one of us now—one of us. Good-night."

He passed through the door, and the dusky room was still again as though no one had been there....

There is an old German tale, by De la Motte Fouque, I fancy, of a young traveller who asks his way to a certain castle, his destination. He is given his directions, and his guide tells him that the journey will be easy enough until he reaches a small wood through which he must pass. This wood will be dark and tangled and bewildering, but more sinister than those obstacles will be the inhabitants of it who, evil, malign, foul and bestial, devote their lives to the destruction of all travellers who endeavour to reach the castle on the hill beyond. And the tale tells how the young traveller, proud of his youth and strength, confident in the security of his armour, nevertheless, when he crosses the dark border of the wood, feels as though his whole world has changed, as though everything in which he formerly trusted is of no value, as though the very weapons that were his chief defence now made him most defenceless. He has in the heart of that wood many perilous adventures, but worst of them all, when he is almost at the end of his strength, is the sudden conviction that he has himself changed, and is himself become one of the foul, gibbering, half-visioned monsters by whom he is surrounded.

As Brandon left the Cathedral there was something of that strange sense with him, a sense that had come to him first, perhaps, in its dimmest and most distant form, on the day of the circus and the elephant, and that now, in all its horrible vigour and confidence, was there close at his elbow. He had always held himself immaculate; he had come down to his fellow-men, loving them, indeed, but feeling that they were of some other clay than his own, and that through no especial virtue of his, but simply because God has so wished it. And now he had stood, and a drunken wastrel had cursed him and told him that he was detested by all men and that they waited for his downfall.

It was those last words of Davray's that rang in his ears: "You're one of us now. You're one of us." Drunkard and wastrel though the man was, those words could not be forgotten, would never be forgotten again.

With his head up, his shoulders back, he returned to his house.

The maid met him in the hall. "There's a man waiting for you in the study, sir."

"Who is it?"

"Mr. Samuel Hogg, sir."

Brandon looked at the girl fixedly, but not unkindly.

"Why did you let him in, Gladys?"

"He wouldn't take no denial, sir. Mrs. Brandon was out and Miss Joan. He said you were expecting him and 'e knew you'd soon be back."

"You should never let any one wait, Gladys, unless I have told you beforehand."

"No, sir."

"Remember that in future, will you?"

"Yes, sir. I'm sure I'm sorry, sir, but——"

Brandon went into his study.

Hogg was standing beside the window, a faded bowler in his hand. He turned when he heard the opening of the door; he presented to the Archdeacon a face of smiling and genial, if coarsened, amiability.

He was wearing rough country clothes, brown knickerbockers and gaiters, and looked something like a stout and seedy gamekeeper fond of the bottle.

"I'm sure you'll forgive this liberty I've taken, Archdeacon," he said, opening his mouth very wide as he smiled—"waiting for you like this; but the matter's a bit urgent."

"Yes?" said Brandon, not moving from the door.

"I've come in a friendly spirit, although there are men who might have come otherwise. You won't deny that, considering the circumstances of the case."

"I'll be grateful to you if you'll explain," said Brandon, "as quickly as possibly your business."

"Why, of course," said Hogg, coming away from the window. "Why, of course, Archdeacon. Now, whoever would have thought that we, you and me, would be in the same box? And that's putting it a bit mild considering that it's my daughter that your son has run away with."

Brandon said nothing, not, however, removing his eyes from Hogg's face.

Hogg was all amiable geniality. "I know it must be against the grain, Archdeacon, having to deal with the likes of me. You've always counted yourself a strike above us country-folk, haven't you, and quite natural too. But, again, in the course of nature we've both of us had children and that, as it turns out, is where we finds our common ground, so to speak— you a boy and me a lovely girl. Such a lovely girl, Archdeacon, as it's natural enough your son should want to run away with."

Brandon went across to his writing-table and sat down.

"Mr. Hogg," he said, "it is true that I had a letter from my son this morning telling me that he had gone up to London with your daughter and was intending to marry her as soon as possible. You will not expect that I should approve of that step. My first impulse was, naturally enough, to go at once to London and to prevent his action at all costs. On thinking it over, however, I felt that as he had run away with the girl the least that he could now do was to marry her.

"I'm sure you will understand my feeling when I say that in taking this step I consider that he has disgraced himself and his family. He has cut himself off from his family irremediably. I think that really that is all that I have to say."

Behind Hogg's strange little half-closed eyes some gleam of anger and hatred passed. There was no sign of it in the geniality of his open smile.

"Why, certainly, Archdeacon, I can understand that you wouldn't care for what he has done. But boys will be boys, won't they? We've both been boys in our time, I daresay. You've looked at it from your point of view, and that's natural enough. But human nature's human nature, and you must forgive me if I look at it from mine. She's my only girl, and a good girl she's been to me, keepin' herself to herself and doing her work and helping me wonderful. Well, your Young spark comes along, likes the look of her and ruins her...."

The Archdeacon made some movement——

"Oh, you may say what you like, Archdeacon, and he may tell you what he likes, but you and I know what happens when two young things with hot blood gets together and there's nobody by. They may mean to be straight enough, but before they knows where they are, nature's took hold of them, and there they are.... But even supposin' that 'asn't happened, I don't know as I'm much better off. That girl was the very prop of my business; she's gone, never to return, accordin' to her own account. As to this marryin' business, that may seem to you, Archdeacon, to improve things, but I'm not so sure that it does after all. You may be all very 'igh and mighty in your way, but I'm thinkin' of myself and the business. What good does my girl marryin' your son do to me? That's what I want to know."

Brandon's hands were clenched upon the table. Nevertheless he still spoke quietly.

"I don't think, Mr. Hogg," he said, "that there's anything to be gained by our discussing this just now. I have only this morning heard of it. You may be assured that justice will be done, absolute justice, to your daughter and yourself."

Hogg moved to the door.

"Why, certainly, Archdeacon. It is a bit early to discuss things. I daresay we shall be havin' many a talk about it all before it's over. I'm sure I only want to be friendly in the matter. As I said before, we're in the same box, you and me, so to speak. That ought to make us tender towards one another, oughtn't it? One losing his son and the other his daughter.

"Such a good girl as she was too. Certainly I'll be going, Archdeacon; leave you to think it over a bit. I daresay you'll see my point of view in time."

"I think, Mr. Hogg, there's nothing to be gained by your coming here. You shall hear from me."

"Well, as to that, Archdeacon," Hogg turned from the half-opened door, smiling, "that's as may be. One can get further sometimes in a little talk than in a dozen letters. And I'm really not much of a letter-writer. But we'll see 'ow things go on. Good-evenin'."

The talk had lasted but five minutes, and every piece of furniture in the room, the chairs, the table, the carpet, the pictures, seemed to have upon it some new stain of disfigurement. Even the windows were dimmed.

Brandon sat staring in front of him. The door opened again and his wife came in.

"That was Samuel Hogg who has just left you?"

"Yes," he said.

He looked across the room at her and was instantly surprised by the strangest feeling. He was not, in his daily life, conscious of "feelings" of any sort—that was not his way. But the events of the past two days seemed to bring him suddenly into a new contact with real life, as though, having lived in a balloon all this time, he had been suddenly bumped out of it with a jerk and found Mother Earth with a terrible bang. He would have told you a week ago that there was nothing about his wife that he did not know and nothing about his own feelings towards her—and yet, after all, the most that he had known was to have no especial feelings towards her of any kind.

But to-day had been beyond possible question the most horrible day he had ever known, and it might be that the very horror of it was to force him to look upon everything on earth with new eyes. It had at least the immediate effect now of showing his wife to him as part of himself, as some one, therefore, hurt as he was, smirched and soiled and abused as he, needing care and kindness as he had never known her to need it before. It was a new feeling for him, a new tenderness.

He greeted and welcomed it as a relief after the horror of Hogg's presence. Poor Amy! She was in as bad a way as he now—they were at last in the same box.

"Yes," he said, "that was Hogg."

Looking at her now in this new way, he was also able to see that she herself was changed. She figured definitely as an actor now with an odd white intensity in her face, with some mysterious purpose in her eyes, with a resolve in the whole poise of her body that seemed to add to her height.

"Well," she said, "what train are you taking up to London?"

"What train?" he repeated after her.

"Yes, to see Falk."

"I am not going to see Falk."

"You're not going up to him?"

"Why should I go?"

"Why should you go? You can ask me that?...To stop this terrible marriage."

"I don't intend to stop it."

There was a pause. She seemed to summon every nerve in her body to her control.

The twitching of her fingers against her dress was her only movement.

"Would you please tell me what you mean to do? After all, I am his mother."

The tenderness that he had felt at first sight of her was increasing so strangely that it was all he could do not to go over to her. But his horror of any demonstration kept him where he was.

"Amy, dear," he said, "I've had a dreadful day—in every way a terrible day. I haven't had time, as things have gone, to think things out. I want to be fair. I want to do the right thing. I do indeed. I don't think there's anything to be gained by going up to London. One thing only now I'm clear about. He's got to marry the girl now he's gone off with her. To do him justice he intends to do that. He says that he has done her no harm, and we must take his word for that. Falk has been many things— careless, reckless, selfish, but never in all his life dishonourable. If I went up now we should quarrel, and perhaps something irreparable would occur. Even though he was persuaded to return, the mischief is done. He must be just to the girl. Every one in the town knows by now that she went with him—her father has been busy proclaiming the news even though there has been no one else."

Mrs. Brandon said nothing. She had made in herself the horrible discovery, after reading Falk's letter, that her thoughts were not upon Falk at all, but upon Morris. Falk had flouted her; not only had he not wanted her, but he had gone off with a common girl of the town. She had suddenly no tenderness for him, no anger against him, no thought of him except that his action had removed the last link that held her.

She was gazing now at Morris with all her eyes. Her brain was fastened upon him with an intensity sufficient almost to draw him, hypnotised, there to her feet. Her husband, her home, Polchester, these things were like dim shadows.

"So you will do nothing?" she said.

"I must wait," he said, "I know that when I act hastily I act badly...." He paused, looked at her doubtfully, then with great hesitation went on: "We are together in this, Amy. I've been—I've been—thinking of myself and my work perhaps too much in the past. We've got to see this through together."

"Yes," she answered, "together." But she was thinking of Morris.



Chapter VIII

The Wind Flies Over the House



Later, that day, she went from the house. It was a strange evening. Two different weathers seemed to have met over the Polchester streets. First there was the deep serene beauty of the May day, pale blue faintly fading into the palest yellow, the world lying like an enchanted spirit asleep within a glass bell, reflecting the light from the shining surface that enfolded it. In this light houses, grass, cobbles lay as though stained by a painter's brush, bright colours like the dazzling pigment of a wooden toy, glittering under the shining sky.

This was a normal enough evening for the Polchester May, but across it, shivering it into fragments, broke a stormy and blustering wind, a wind that belonged to stormy January days, cold and violent, with the hint of rain in its murmuring voice. It tore through the town, sometimes carrying hurried and, as it seemed, terrified clouds with it; for a while the May light would be hidden, the air would be chill, a few drops like flashes of glass would fall, gleaming against the bright colours—then suddenly the sky would be again unchallenged blue, there would be no cloud on the horizon, only the pavements would glitter as though reflecting a glassy dome. Sometimes it would be more than one cloud that the wind would carry on its track—a company of clouds; they would appear suddenly above the horizon, like white-faced giants peering over the world's rim, then in a huddled confusion they would gather together, then start their flight, separating, joining, merging, dwindling and expanding, swallowing up the blue, threatening to encompass the pale saffron of the lower sky, then vanishing with incredible swiftness, leaving warmth and colour in their train.

Amy Brandon did not see the enchanted town. She heard, as she left the house, the clocks striking half-past six. Some regular subconscious self, working with its accustomed daily duty, murmured to her that to-night her husband was dining at the Conservative Club and Joan was staying on to supper at the Sampsons' after the opening tennis party of the season. No one would need her—as so often in the past no one had needed her. But it was her unconscious self that whispered this to her; in the wild stream into whose current during these last strange months she had flung herself she was carried along she knew not, she cared not, whither.

Enough for her that she was free now to encompass her desire, the only dominating, devastating desire that she had ever known in all her dead, well-ordered life. But it was not even with so active a consciousness as this that she thought this out. She thought out nothing save that she must see Morris, be with Morris, catch from Morris that sense of appeasement from the torture of hunger unsatisfied that never now left her.

In the last weeks she had grown so regardless of the town's opinion that she did not care how many people saw her pass Morris' door. She had, perhaps, been always regardless, only in the dull security of her life there had been no need to regard them. She despised them all; she had always despised them, for the deference and admiration that they paid her husband if for no other reason. Despised them too, it might be, because they had not seen more in herself, had thought her the dull, lifeless nonentity in whose soul no fires had ever burned.

She had never chattered nor gossiped with them, did not consider gossip a factor in any one's, day; she had never had the least curiosity about any one else, whether about life or character or motive.

There is no egoist in the world so complete as the disappointed woman without imagination.

She hurried through the town as though she were on a business of the utmost urgency; she saw nothing and she heard nothing. She did not even see Miss Milton sitting at her half-opened window enjoying the evening air.

Morris himself opened the door. He was surprised when he saw her; when he had closed the door and helped her off with her coat he said as they walked into the drawing-room:

"Is there anything the matter?"

She saw at once that the room was cheerless and deserted.

"Is Miss Burnett here?" she asked.

"No. She went off to Rafiel for a week's holiday. I'm being looked after by the cook."

"It's cold." She drew her shoulders and arms together, shivering.

"Yes. It is cold. It's these showers. Shall I light the fire?"

"Yes, do."

He bent down, putting a match to the paper; then when the fire blazed he pushed the sofa forwards.

"Now sit down and tell me what's the matter."

She could see that he was extremely nervous.